President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%↑
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd
(D) Adam Frisch
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
52%↑
48%↓
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
August 19, 2011 10:53 PM UTC
31 Comments
English proficiency is a requirement for citizenship. Voting is the highest act of citizenship.
Once again, your presumption that Hispanic citizens are so concerned with those who did not do the work they did to assimilate into this culture is odd. And incorrect.
You have to speak english to BECOME a citizen. If you are born a citizen, there is never any test that you have to pass in order to vote except to live past your eighteenth birthday.
Furthermore, the United States has no national language, so to arbitrarily select english as the manditory ad exclusive ballot language simply because its the one that you and all your white buddies speak, is clear discrimination.
Making the ballots all in english won’t make spanish speakers ineligible to vote, it just makes it harder for them to understand what they are voting on.
But maybe that’s what you and Rep. Coffman want, in the end.
I spent the day trying to research this.
First of all, I actually support ballots being made available in absolutely any language that people want them printed in. In my mind, anything that we can do to make sure that voters are as informed as possible on the issues they are voting on (including understanding the words) is best for us as a whole.
However, it has been pointed out to me that you are required to speak read and write english with proficiency in order to become a citizen through naturalization. If this is the case, and if only citizens can vote, then why are there voters who don’t speak english well enough to vote?
(As a side note, I have one answer to this question already, but I am interested in everyone else has to say)
on ballots these days. Complicated things like that are pretty tough to read in one’s own language, let alone a second language.
for citizens born in this country (or born out of the country to citizen-parents, for that matter).
This is vote suppression, pure and simple.
I was required to take tests and pass them to demonstrate proficiency in order to graduate.
I can’t speak Spanish for crap now though. In fact I never really could; it’s one thing to speak or write well enough on a test you’ve studied hard for, it’s quite another to keep it up for 20 years.
There were parts of the Midwest where public school was taught in German in the past because it was the common language in those towns.
As to the English requirement for citizenship, there’s also a civics test. A test that the majority of people born in the US cannot pass. Any proposals to require passing that to vote too? (Because I’ll bet that would favor us Democrats.)
Science test: Is evolution real? Is the earth more than 5000 years old? Where are the petroleum reserves to keep using at our current rate, let alone increasing? Will god put more dinosaurs down there to provide more oil?
Math test: Show how to Balance the budget with only cuts of services that your constituents don’t use, getting rid of projects in everyone else’s district only, and no new revenues?
From the Talking Points link above…
The questions I will ask Coffman are..
-If this is a “big government issue”, at what level of government would you want this legislation? State, county, city?
-If this is a fiscal issue, why not demand that the federal government fund it?
The thing I can’t wrap my head around is that this law has been around since 1973! Being required to provide other-than-English ballots should not surprise any county clerk.
Why can’t the counties get creative with this? Is there anything that says counties can’t ask for a ballot language preference on voter registrations?
This is a bigotry issue.
Coffman has had a long history of trying to suppress the vote. He knows non-white and non-English speaking Americans lean Democratic, and he is clearly trying to fix future elections for Republicans. The guy is a bigot. There is no delicate or politically correct way to say it.
Mike Coffman just want more of the hispanic I think if they live in this country they should know english
I don’t know what is more remarkable:
1. Nativist bullshit – in Chinglish?
2. Nativist bullshit concealing payday loan spam?
3. You stupid fucking payday lenders are still spamming this blog?
Just wow…
Do you really think everyone needs to know how to speak and write in English, Johnny, like you do?
But OK vote. Tarzan white.
So, if you have to be proficient in English to vote, why do we need to have ballots in multiple languages? I’m a Democrat and believe we’ve gone way overboard with translating everything into other languages. This is leading into an increasingly balkanized country.
As IndyNinja points out above, if you are born a citizen there is NEVER a requirement to know English to vote (or to do anything else, for that matter).
The Constitution allows Congress to establish laws regarding immigration and naturalization and Congress decided to require proficiency in English to become a naturalized citizen.
Plus, in 2006, Congress approved the extension of the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. The provision for multilingual ballots comes from this law.
By default or design, the republicans are out to divide and destroy this country…and I am more and more concerned about the secret sources of all their political funding. I do NOT believe that republicans are deliberately working for foreign political/economic interests that would benefit from a weakened America. I do believe that republicans are dups.
@thethinker….
,
I would like for you to tell us where you got this idea?
People in America, born into non-English speaking households, are citizens who may or may not speak English.
My father would be a fine example.
to trash immigrants and has no other positions on any issue. Yet he always says “and I’m a Democrat!”
No you’re not, you racist fuck. Take your xenophobia elsewhere, Democrats don’t want any part of you.
The logic is eerily similar…
http://www.gjsentinel.com/opin…
(not behind a paywall…)
Democrats coordinated something? Something aggressive? Show me the original.
it is predicted that Latinos will outnumber any other group.
When Latinos have a majority I hope they will publish a ballot in English
in the same way that generations descending from past waves of immigrants did so I wouldn’t be too concerned. My parents were the first generation born here and while my mother was fluent in her parents language as well as English, my father’s fluency in his parent’s native language was pretty weak. We grandchildren of the immigrant generation can muster a few words and that’s about it. So it’s a pretty transitory problem. And what’s wrong with being fluent in more than one language anyway? I wish I was.
A what point did the real original languages of Colorado become illegal? English, and American English, are late comers to the state. We should not be speaking English, we should have be speaking in some outlying dialect of Clovis.
Continued idiocy is the order of the day. There is not one Republican who has the power to grab some news who dares do anything with it but continue the idiocy.
I’m always left wondering which, if any of them, actually believe the crap they’re selling. There have to be at least a few who are just so sociopathic that they’re able to play the Tea Party game without an iota of sincerity.
All the currently registered voters — in the 16 proposed Colorado counties who will be potentially required to provide dual language ballots — registered to vote by providing their voter information in English on forms that were written in English. Imagine that!
The public might be a little more sympathetic if… let’s say, Spanish language ballots… were provided to those who actually requested them. But to send out dual language ballots to everyone in a county is ridiculous. Are we then going to have Election Day controversies because some people voted one time in English and one time in Spanish? (Remember how many people couldn’t figure out a butterfly ballot in 2000.)
Isn’t Obama and Bush, Bennet and Buck, etc. spelled the same in English and Spanish? I’m sure anyone, literate in either language, could easily recognize the two major party names.
If you are concerned about someone not understanding a ballot issue, translating it into another language certainly isn’t going to make it any easier to comprehend. Many of us native English speakers struggle through the legalese of these ballot issues, even when it is in our own language. Besides, I’m sure Spanish language radio and TV is as inundated with political ads telling folks how to vote on a specific issue, as English language ones are.
The whole argument about disenfranchising voters, because of English language ballots, is such a red herring. Just what have these voters — in the proposed 16 Colorado counties — been doing before now? I imagine they had someone they knew and trusted help them with the mail-in ballot, or took such a person to the polling place. Good idea. Smart people.
It’s not possible. Or is it?
Perhaps you didn’t read close enough.
You see, the voting rights act is already law. It has been for almost 40 years now. Rep. Coffman is trying to remove provisions that already exist.
They’ve been voting… in Spanish… as required by law.
While counties may be the ones to process voter registrations, the process is regulated by the Secretary of State’s office. And guess what, here’s voter registration form in Spanish:
https://www.sos.state.co.us/Vo…
So…
Yeah, pretty much your entire argument is completely false.
Not exactly. Voters in 10 counties have been using bilingual ballots (or on-site translators in the case of voting where Ute is widely spoken), but the Census results mean an additional 16 counties will have to comply with the Voting Rights Act going forward.