ProEnglish Investigates Costs Of Multilingual Ballots

ProEnglish is investigating the costs of multilingual ballots in advance of the 2020 elections.

Foreign-language ballots will be available in at least 29 different states in time for November.

The spread of foreign language voting materials and ballots potentially opens the door to voter manipulation and election fraud, and also serves as an invitation to even greater fraud by potentially encouraging non-citizens to vote illegally in our elections.

Here are just a few recent examples of the whopping costs paid by U.S. taxpayers to provide multilingual ballots in some recent elections:

Osceola County, Florida, near Walt Disney World, paid approximately $108,000 for multilingual ballots in 2016.

Hall County, Georgia, paid an estimated amount of more than $150,000 for multilingual ballots in 2016.

And in Los Angeles County, California, more than $3.3 million in taxpayer dollars was spent to provide multilingual ballots in a recent general election.

These are just 3 counties of different sizes in this nation. There are 3,141 counties or county equivalents in the entire USA. It is easy to see that there is the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on multilingual ballots in the 2020 elections, with the entire cost likely being shouldered by already over-burdened American taxpayers.

In an era of massive government deficits at all levels, and some attempts at budget-cutting, it is outrageous and highly irresponsible for states and counties to break the backs of American taxpayers by forcing them to pay for costly multilingual ballots. It also is important to remember that voters who do not speak or understand English always have the option to bring interpreters with them into the voting booth. 

As former President Theodore Roosevelt said: “We have but one flag; we must also learn one language, and that language is English.”