The Hall County Board of Elections voted 3-2 to rescind a 2017 motion to "proactively provide Spanish voting material for voters in Hall County."
The vote on Tuesday came after nearly 30 minutes of comments from more than a dozen citizens, all but one of whom asked the board not to rescind the motion. Among those was former Gainesville City Council candidate Maria del Rosario Palacios.
"In my experiences in the last six years, registering people to vote, working part time, volunteering part time...I've come across numerous Puerto Ricans and other people who were born inside the U.S., spent time outside and who do not have access to things in English and do not vote and feel very discouraged to vote because of that," Palacios said.
Board Member Craig Lutz made the motion to rescind the previous motion, which was made by still-sitting Board Member Gala Sheats. The motion was never funded or acted on by the Hall County Board of Commissioners.
Lutz said that the original motion was out of order.
"We don't know the cost (of providing Spanish voting material)," Lutz said. "The board made a decision that was in the dark in the fact that it wasn't previously on the agenda posted as it should have been."
He added that the board did not have the ability to allocate funding to providing the material, saying that would have to come from the county Board of Commissioners. Representatives of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) were in attendance and warned the board that not providing bilingual ballots could put Hall County in position for litigation.
One area resident, David Johnson of Gainesville, said that the potential for a lawsuit concerned him.
"We all know that Hall County is a conservative county," Johnson said. "The nature of being a conservative is conserving tax dollars."
Board members Sheats and Michelle Sanchez-Jones voted against the move to rescind, while board members Lutz and Kenneth Cochran voted in favor. Board Chairman Dr. Tom Smiley broke the tie.
"I believe very much in order and in doing things in order," Smiley said. "The motion that is being considered for rescinding was a motion that should have been ruled by the chair out of order. It was a motion that had no legal standing, a motion that had no proper standing because the motion being made required the expenditure of money that the board approving the motion did not have. That is a gross error and negligent."
He said he felt that many people were misinformed about what the board was doing with the motion.
"I was very disturbed to hear people today talk about our keeping bilingual ballots. There are no bilingual ballots to keep. We are not rescinding an action that is being done," Smiley said.
After the motion was passed, Lutz made a second motion to form a committee that will look into the financial and procedural specifics of providing bilingual voting material. That motion was approved and the committee will feature Board members Sheats and Cochran. According to Lutz' motion, it will report back to the board no sooner than January 1, 2019.
Three residents spoke in a second public comment session after the votes had been cast supporting the board's move. Sheats, however, said she was upset with the decision.
"I just pray that we do the right thing and not hide behind money, which is the root of all evil," Sheats said.
A transcript of Dr. Smiley's statement explaining his tie-breaking vote is listed in the sidebar of this article.
