Judge Orders Florida To Provide Voting Ballots In Spanish

A federal judge has ordered the State of Florida to provide all election ballots in Spanish starting with the 2020 election cycle.

The judge agreed with a group of voters born in Puerto Rico who argued that the lack of Spanish ballots limited their access to the polls and violated the Voting Rights Act.

“Compliance with this Order is not optional,” opined Chief Judge Mark Walker of the Northern District of Florida Gainesville Division. “This court will not hesitate to use every tool the law provides to enforce this Order.”

Walker ordered that all primary and general election ballots must be printed in Spanish starting with the ballots in March of 2020.

ProEnglish agrees with the late John Silber, former President of Boston University, who stated during his 1996 testimony to Congress that bilingual ballots “ impose an unacceptable cost by degrading the very concept of the citizen to that of someone lost in a country whose public discourse is incomprehensible to him.”

ProEnglish believes that there are five key reasons to oppose multilingual ballots: (1) there is no justification for multilingual ballots and election materials; (2) multilingual ballot requirements are arbitrary and wasteful; (3) multilingual ballots are an unfunded mandate on local governments; (4) multilingual ballots increase the likelihood of errors and vote fraud; and (5) multilingual ballots are a growing burden.