Plain-Spoken Ideas on Turning Out the Vote

Re “Voting Needs to Be a Big Deal Again,” Voices, April 23: Lest Sue Pascoe’s remarks about English-only voting materials fan the flames of those who support closing the borders, it might help to historicize the issue. Through the 19th century, naturalized citizens living in their close-knit ethnic enclaves in the Midwest and East Coast insisted that the language of their country of origin appear on the ballot slips. Indeed, the 1790 Naturalization Act did not require new citizens to become versed in the English language (although the act did demand that new citizens had to be white, a racial barrier that was finally lifted with a 1952 immigration act).

Regina F. Lark

Canoga Park

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I share Pascoe’s opinion that Americans should view their right to vote as a privilege. However, she is wrong to conflate the civic duty to vote with a requirement to do so in English. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say that the nation’s one and only one language is English. It is a myth that English was the only language spoken at the founding of the republic, a country made up of a variety of African and European immigrants as well as the Native Americans. Voting should be considered a privilege, but we should not privilege English as the only language of the vote.

Yuen-Gen Liang

Tustin

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I read Pascoe’s impassioned piece that voting needs to be a big deal again. Pascoe, however, failed to address the issue of why many Americans no longer vote. I, for one, do not regularly vote on the major issues because I have come to realize that any state or federal judge can nullify as unconstitutional an ordinance, statute, law or regulation approved by the voters or their elected representatives.

Why should citizens continue to vote when one judge has the unchecked power to instantly nullify millions of votes? I believe the U.S. Congress and the state legislatures need to enact constitutional amendments to balance the unbridled power of judges in favor of the people’s elected representatives at all levels of government.

Until the power of the American judiciary is checked in its tracks, the voices of millions of Americans will go unheeded at the ballot box. As it stands today, the process of voting is looked upon by many citizens as a sham.

James Ralph Boyd

Los Angeles