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What a Waste!

by James Reza

Mon, Oct 27, 2008, 07:40 PM

Last Monday, my wife and I took advantage of early voting in Texas. Having
made up my mind of who I was supporting, it didn¹t take me long to cast my
vote. However, my wife and I spent almost 45 minutes to an hour waiting in
line to do our civic duty. Of all my years of voting, I must say that this
year was the longest time I¹ve spent in line to cast my vote in a
Presidential Election. While at the voting poll building, I could not help
but notice that almost all of the voters were white and nearly all were
senior citizens. Having said that, I must confess that I live in a
predominately white populated suburb called Lake Worth. Though some voters
could barely walk, and others were pushed in their wheelchairs, all waited
patiently and seemed to be enjoying themselves as they waited to cast their
treasured votes.

While waiting to cast my vote, I couldn¹t help but notice the many signs in
Spanish and in English in the voting area of how to operate the voting
devices to help them cast their votes once they got in a voting booth. As I
waited in line, I suddenly got a flashback of when I was given the
assignment by the Fort Worth Water District Board to run their water board
elections in North Fort Worth in the 1980s. Unlike city, state, and
national run elections, the Water District elections were different in that
they would bundle in several precincts into one polling place at an
elementary school close to my house. Ladies and gentlemen, I must remind
you here that North Fort Worth where I formerly resided has to this day the
largest concentration of Hispanics in North Texas. Thus, most of the voters
in the precincts I was put in charge to run the Water Board District
elections were in most part Hispanic voters. Of the many years I conducted
the Water Board Elections in North Fort Worth, I can only recall one
incident where a Hispanic voter told me he was going to cast his ballot in
Spanish. In English he told me, ŒŒJames, just for the heck of it, I think
I¹m going to use one of the Spanish voting ballots. I hate for all these
Spanish ballots to go to waste and end up in the trash can.¹¹ Though he was
joking, he was right on the money, because after I¹d closed the Water
District polling place, I would burn the unused Spanish ballots in the
school¹s incinerator where the election was held.

After conducting several Water Board District elections I asked one of the
Water District managers if I could hire an extra poll worker who was fluent
in Spanish and English to assist those who wanted to cast their votes in
Spanish. ŒŒJames, you¹re already given ballots in Spanish, why would you
want to hire a bilingual poll worker?¹¹ he asked. I then told him that I
was a printer and was well aware that the cost of printing the Spanish
ballots, which were seldom used, were more expensive than if we hired an
extra bilingual poll worker. After the Water District manager and I
compared the cost of the printing of Spanish ballots to a day¹s pay to a
poll worker, I proved to him that I was right. He then gave me a phone
number to talk to someone in the Election Board at the State Capitol and
explain to an Election Board official my position in hiring bilingual poll
workers versus using Spanish ballots.

Making several phone calls to our State Capitol I finally managed to get in
touch with a Texas Election Board official. After I explained to him my
suggestion of hiring bilingual poll workers instead of using Spanish ballots
that were seldom used, he somewhat agreed with me. However, he told me that
he got his marching orders from Washington and had to follow their election
rules guidelines. In other words, though my recommendation could save the
State of Texas money, it didn¹t matter, Washington¹s election rules had to
be followed. The Election official then revealed to me some staggering
Spanish printing figures when Texas conducts state elections. He told me
that Texas taxpayers pay untold thousands of dollars to newspapers
throughout Texas to print election ballots in Spanish. Folks, this was back
in the 1980s, one can only imagine what that figure is today.

Folks, let me reveal to you some factual figures from the 2004 Presidential
Election. In 2004 there were 221,256,931 voting age Americans. That year,
174,800,000 registered to vote, but would you believe that only 122,294,978
or 55.3 percent of Americans actually voted.

Again in the 2004 Presidential Election, voters according to their race
voted in the following percentage numbers: Whites, 77 percent; African
Americans, 11 percent; Latinos (or Hispanics) 8 percent; Asians, 2 percent;
and finally Others, 2 percent. Folks, for many years, politicians from both
parties have pandered to Hispanics in providing them bilingual education,
bilingual ballots, bilingual this and bilingual that. Sadly, more Hispanics
drop out of school, few go to college and as one can see, few Hispanics go
to the polls. Obviously all this Spanish nonsense has not served Hispanics
well. My final question to my fellow Hispanics is why not try to focus more
on English Raza (Hispanics)?

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...
written by Ken Dickson , October 28, 2008

this is "dead-on"! If someone cannot speak English, why should the USA expect them to select the government! This still is an English-speaking country & to waste money on ballots not in English & interpreters is a weakness in the system!!

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