By Jill Replogle
Voting advocates hope several recent changes will encourage more of California’s non-English speaking citizens to vote this November.
First, as of this year, legal permanent residents can sign up to be poll workers in California. Proponents of the change hope it will help counties expand the pool of potential bilingual poll workers.
Los Angeles County already had more than 200 legal permanent residents staffing the polls in the June election, said Deanna Kitamura, a senior staff attorney with the advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
“A majority of them were bilingual,” she said.
Allowing legal permanent residents to be poll workers also gives them a chance to see democracy in action, Kitamura said.
“Not only will they have that glimpse, but they might be encouraged, once they become citizens, to go out and vote,” she said.
Also new this year, San Diego’s Asian-American voters will find language assistance at polling stations in four Asian languages — Hindi, Japanese, Khmer and Korean — in addition to the three that were already offered — Tagalog, Chinese and Vietnamese.
Under state law, the county must post sample ballots in those languages and seek bilingual poll workers for stations where non-English speaking voters are likely to cast their ballots.
Asian-Americans are California’s — and San Diego’s — fastest growing minority group.
Non-English speakers can also register to vote online in eight Asian languages, plus Spanish, at registertovote.ca.gov.