Two Latino activist groups have sent a letter to the Gwinnett County Board of Elections, asking that all cities in the county comply with a mandate to provide voter materials in both Spanish and English.
LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the Georgia Association a Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), sent joint Notice Letters and Georgia Open Records Act Requests on July 18 to the elections board and all municipalities in the county. The letters demand that the entities adhere to the mandates required under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).
Under federal law, Gwinnett County recently was designated as a county required to provide access to Spanish language translation and materials for voters. Both LatinoJustice and GALEO said there are some cities in Gwinnett that have fallen short in their efforts to serve Latino voters.
"The County and all municipalities within the County are required to provide language assistance, election information and materials to Spanish speaking citizens seeking to register to vote on an equal basis with all that is provided to English speaking voters, today, so that no eligible voter is disenfranchised," said Joanna E. Cuevas Ingram, Associate Counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF in a press statement.
Jerry Gonzalez, Executive Director of GALEO, said the groups are concerned about certain cities.
"Right now, we are concerned that the municipalities of Auburn, Berkeley Lake, Braselton, Loganville and Lilburn, Georgia, within Gwinnett County, may not be in compliance with the VRA," Gonzalez said. "As recently as this Tuesday, their websites, which contain valuable information on upcoming municipal elections this year, were in English only and they were failing to provide the same information online in Spanish."
Gonzalez said the city of Lawrenceville offers a voter registration form in Spanish, but the website is English only.
He said there's also an issue with translation tools being used by some government entities.
"Gwinnett County itself appears to be using an automated Bing translation tool located at the bottom of its webpage, but we had to contact them to find out where it was, and we believe they are not in compliance. The municipalities of Duluth, Norcross, Peachtree Corners and Sugar Hill similarly attempt to use a Google Translate automated machine option for the election information available on their website, yet automated machine translations such as those developed by Google and Bing are not always accurate, can cause confusion and place additional burdens on access to voting by frustrating equal access to voter information for limited English speaking voters," Gonzalez said.
Among other things, the five-page letter requests a meeting with representatives from Gwinnett County and all of its municipalities in order to "avoid costly voting rights litigation." The groups want that meeting to take place prior to any municipal elections this fall.
To see copies of the letters, follow
this link.
