{"id":7743,"date":"2016-12-09T02:59:44","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T07:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/?p=7743"},"modified":"2016-12-09T03:02:28","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T08:02:28","slug":"foreign-language-ballots-may-be-coming-soon-to-cobb-county-georgia-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/09\/foreign-language-ballots-may-be-coming-soon-to-cobb-county-georgia-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign language ballots may be coming soon to Cobb County, Georgia, USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marietta Daily Journal<\/em><\/strong>
\nDecember 8, 2016<\/p>\n

Anthony White<\/p>\n

Foreign language ballots may be coming soon<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cobb\u2019s Hispanic voting population has nearly doubled since 2008 and now accounts for 3.8 percent of the county\u2019s registered voters. If these numbers continue to grow, Cobb may find itself, like Gwinnett County, mandated to provide Spanish-language ballots and other materials to voters who may not speak and read English well.<\/p>\n

Gwinnett County became the only Georgia county required to provide bilingual voting ballots and materials to its Hispanic voters by a U.S. Census Bureau designation released Monday. Under the designation, established by Section 203 of the Federal Voting Rights Act, <\/a>counties with a minority voting population of more than 10,000 or greater than 5 percent that speak a single, non-English language must accommodate those voters by providing ballots and voting material in that population group\u2019s language.<\/p>\n

Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials<\/a>, said the designation is important because \u201cmore Latino voters will have equal access to be able to exercise their right to vote without having English language proficiency as a barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gwinnett is the first Georgia county to receive this designation, but \u201cother counties, like Cobb, Hall and Whitfield counties, are likely next,\u201d Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n

Janine Eveler, director of the Cobb Board of Elections, said she is aware of the designation, but isn\u2019t sure if Cobb will be impacted anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy understanding is that the designations are made every five years,\u201d Eveler said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way to know where Cobb\u2019s demographics will be at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cobb does not provide Spanish-language or bilingual ballots.<\/p>\n

According to the Georgia Secretary of State, in November 2016, there were 26,940 Hispanic voters registered in Gwinnett County, which accounted for 6.2 percent of the county\u2019s 431,727 registered voters. Gwinnett\u2019s total Latino population is estimated at 171,000 or 20.3 percent of the county\u2019s total population, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.<\/p>\n

By contrast, in November 2016, there were 16,428 registered Hispanic voters in Cobb which accounted for 3.8 percent of Cobb\u2019s 423,890 registered voters. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that Cobb\u2019s estimated 89,000 Hispanics or Latinos make up 12.5 percent of the Cobb\u2019s total population.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez said it would be premature to comment on the impact of the Latino vote in Gwinnett or Cobb County, but \u201cLatino voters across the state of Georgia were turning out in large numbers as we have not seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzalez also pointed out that \u201cnationally only 19 percent of Latinos voted for Donald Trump, a historical low number for the GOP nominee.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Cobb is not required to provide bilingual ballots under the U.S. Census designation, there are other provisions in the Voting Rights Act that may require the county to begin issuing Spanish-language ballots, Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople born and educated on the island of Puerto Rico are entitled to have access to Spanish language protections for voting as well and there are no numerical requirements,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Gonzalez, several counties in Georgia have Puerto Rican populations and those counties may be out of compliance with the Voting Rights Act by not providing bilingual ballots and other materials to Puerto Rican voters.<\/p>\n

Eveler said she was not aware of this provision in the Voting Rights Act. \u00a0HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marietta Daily Journal December 8, 2016 Anthony White Foreign language ballots may be coming soon Cobb\u2019s Hispanic voting population has nearly doubled since 2008 and now accounts for 3.8 percent of the county\u2019s registered voters. If these numbers continue to grow, Cobb may find itself, like Gwinnett County, mandated to provide Spanish-language ballots and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7743"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7751,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions\/7751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}