REGIONAL REPORT : Multilingual Ballot Law Forces Hard Changes : Elections: Six Southland counties will be required to print materials in Spanish. Orange is among a handful in U.S. mandated to give help in two foreign languages.

Picture a polling place with separate voting booths for English-, Spanish-, Vietnamese-, Chinese-, Japanese- and Tagalog-speaking voters.

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Charles Weissburd can’t.

“We just don’t have the money or the wherewithal to do that,” said the county’s top election official.

For that reason, Weissburd--without waiting for President Bush to sign pending revisions to the 1965 Voting Rights Act--has already fashioned an agreement with local Latino and Asian-American activist groups to improve language assistance to voters without a fivefold increase in voting booths.

The federal legislation, approved by the Senate last Friday, would require counties to supply voting materials for Latino, Asian-American, American Indian and Alaskan minority groups that number 10,000 or more, share a common language, speak little or no English and have a literacy rate below the national average. The bill is expected to be signed into law in the next two weeks.

Under its provisions, Orange County would be one of only a handful across America mandatedto provide assistance in two foreign languages--Spanish and Vietnamese--as well as in English.

The Orange County registrar of voters office will prepare Spanish- and Vietnamese-language sample ballots this fall at a cost estimated at $20,000 to $50,000. There is not enough time, said Registrar of Voters Donald F. Tanney, to translate into two tongues the 340 different ballots prepared for various communities and legislative districts within the county.

Meanwhile, in San Diego County, where the language aid law would mandate assistance in Spanish, Registrar Conny McCormack says she will wait for guidance from the California secretary of state’s office before deciding how to proceed.

“For almost 10 years, we’ve (voluntarily) offered a generic sample ballot in Spanish,” she said. “But we routinely get less than 50 requests in each election.”

Proponents say the new rules will help bring more ethnic voters to the polls. Opponents say there is no proof of that and contend that it will reduce incentives for minorities to learn English and join the mainstream of American life.

Both sides, however, agree on one thing: Nowhere will the law have more dramatic repercussions than in pluralistic Southern California.

Under its provisions, Los Angeles would be the only county in the nation required to print voting materials in six different languages.

All six of California’s southernmost counties--Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Imperial included--would be required to provide voting materials in Spanish.

In recent years, Imperial has been the only Southern California county required to provide ballots in any language other than English. Under provisions of the current bill, sponsors say, ballots in virtually all bilingual counties will eventually be printed in both English and Spanish.

Los Angeles County will be an exception, they add, because ballots printed in six languages would not fit in the voting machines currently in use and because there are not enough machines to provide separate ones for balloting in each language.

To get a head start because of the county’s unique circumstances, Weissburd has reached an agreement in recent weeks with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. The pact says that English-language sample ballots mailed to each registered voter in the county this fall will include instructions on how to obtain sample ballots in any of the five additional languages.

Los Angeles County also will provide multilingual, toll-free phone lines for voter questions. Weissburd said he does not know how much it will cost the county.

MALDEF and APALC have agreed to step up community education programs to make potential voters aware of the language assistance materials.

Proponents of the law say the combined outreach efforts are likely to increase minority voter turnout, which traditionally has been a much lower percentage than for Anglos.

“With written materials (in native languages) it’s easier to determine the complexities of the ballot, which sometimes I don’t even understand in English,” said Jill Medina, the English-speaking education coordinator for APALC.

Aides to Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), a sponsor of the legislation, say studies show Latino voting percentages are far higher in New Mexico and Texas, which already offer bilingual ballots, than in heavily Latino areas of California and Illinois where Spanish is not included on ballots. In New Mexico, which has had bilingual ballots since 1912, the Latino voting rate is 85% of the Anglo rate.

“Where bilingual ballots are available, they are used,” said John Trasvina, general counsel to the Senate’s Constitution subcommittee, which Simon heads.

Trasvina said that Los Angeles County, while not offering bilingual ballots at the polling booth, will be deemed to have complied with the law through the agreement it reached. “Los Angeles County is so large, it’s really the exception,” Trasvina said. “Officials have already worked with the affected community groups in Los Angeles County.”

Melissa Warren, spokeswoman for California Secretary of State March Fong Eu, agreed that trying to provide separate booths would be impractical. “You’d have the Spanish booth, the Chinese booth, the Japanese booth--it sounds like a food circus. And for a primary, you’d have the Spanish Republican booth, the Spanish Democratic booth, the Spanish Greens booth. It would be virtually impossible for Los Angeles County to do that. It would be phenomenally expensive too.”

However, other affected counties should be able to provide bilingual ballots on Election Day, Trasvina added. “Only in instances where it’s impossible should counties not do it that way,” he said.

Such prospects are worrisome to some elected officials and residents of Southern California.

“How many people will request a Spanish ballot in Thousand Oaks?” asked Bruce Bradley, Ventura County’s assistant registrar. “I know it will get more people outraged at the system.”

Bradley said that unless ordered to provide Spanish ballots in November, Ventura officials plan to post a Spanish-language sample ballot in each polling place and provide bilingual election officials in precincts with heavy Latino concentrations.

Orange County’s Tanney said he already has received calls from residents “angry at the whole concept--they strongly believe that election materials should be in English only.”

For almost a decade beginning in the mid-1970s, bilingual elections were the rule in California. But a 1984 change in the Voting Rights Act limited the requirement to 10 counties, including Imperial, with a 5% or higher language minority.

Imperial County Registrar John Kennerson said that fewer than 100 Spanish-language ballots are requested in most elections.

“It’s a big dollar impact,” Kennerson said. “One year, the cost amounted to $106.10 per ballot.”

Longtime California political analyst Mervin Field said Imperial County’s experience is typical. “It would be nice if (multilingual balloting) did encourage people to vote, “ he said. “But where Spanish language ballots have been available, the requests for them have been abysmally low and the actual participation even lower.”