ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
August 4, 2005
Justice Dept. hits Hub with voting rights suit
Jeremy Schwab
After the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit
last week charging the city of Boston with violating the voting
rights of people with limited English skills, Mayor Thomas Menino
shot back, “I can’t wait to fight this in court.”
Menino’s comment, reported Tuesday in the Boston Globe,
underscored the defensive attitude his administration has taken
in the face of the lawsuit, which comes just a few months before
November’s mayoral election.
Most previous voting rights cases alleging mistreatment of voters
with limited English skills have been settled by consent decrees,
according to a spokesman for the Justice Department.
When asked why the administration chose to fight the suit, a spokesman
for Menino said the suit does not specify what incidents of voting
rights violations actually occurred.
“If you look at the nine page complaint, there is a call
for a remedy with no specifics on how the city is supposed to
remedy the situation,” said the spokesman, Seth Gitell.
However, when asked whether Menino would consider settling the
dispute out of court if specifics are given, Gitell would not
give a definitive answer.
“I’m not going to speculate,” he said.
Gitell said the city has made “significant strides”
in providing voting access. He noted that at a recent special
election in Dorchester materials were translated not just into
Spanish as required by law, but into six other languages as well.
The lawsuit seeks federal oversight of city elections until 2007,
and alleges that the city’s “elections standards,
practices and procedures” negatively affected limited English
proficient Latino and Asian American voters.
Latino and Asian American voters were treated with hostility;
denied the right to be assisted by a person of their choice; their
ballot choices were improperly influenced, coerced or ignored
by poll workers; translators were not made available to them and
poll workers refused or failed to provide provisional ballots
to them, according to a Justice Department press release.
The suit also alleges that despite repeated warnings from the
Justice Department, the city failed to place Spanish-speaking
personnel at most polling places where they were needed, in violation
of the Voting Rights Act.
MassVOTE, Viet-AID and the Chinese Progressive Association reportedly
turned over records to the Justice Department to help in the investigation.
Incidents of alleged voting rights abuses have occurred in Boston
in recent years. In the 2003 preliminary city elections, the election
department allegedly understaffed polls, allowed campaign workers
to come within 150 feet of polling stations and did not provide
adequate privacy to voters casting their ballots, according to
a letter to then-Election Commissioner Nancy Lo from the secretary
of state’s office.
In the general elections that year, voters in Chinatown, Jamaica
Plain and Dorchester who attempted to bullet vote — to voter
for only one candidate instead of four — were reportedly
told they had to vote for four at-large city council candidates.
MassVOTE Director Atiya Dangleben attributed the problems in 2003
to a lack of properly trained poll workers.
“They were not well trained in many instances,” she
said. “We didn’t find poll workers had any ill will
or anything like that. They just didn’t know.”
Dangleben said that since Election Commissioner Geraldine Cuddyer
took over for her predecessor Nancy Lo last year, the election
department has been more cooperative in working with activists
such as MassVOTE to remedy complaints.
Some elected officials of color questioned the city’s decision
to fight the lawsuit.
“I don’t understand why he is resisting moving ahead
with the remedies,” said City Councilor Chuck Turner. “I
think they ought to respond and take care of those issues rather
than spending city money to fight what seemed to be legitimate
requests.”
Councilor Felix Arroyo, the council’s only Latino, said
complaints of discrimination should be taken seriously.
“Any complaints from citizens either in a legal or informal
fashion regarding their rights to participate democratically in
our elections should be taken quite seriously,” he said.
“That is the core of citizenship. That is the core of the
power that each individual in our community should have.”
Back
to Lead Story Archives
Home
Page