The Battle Over Bilingual Ballots

The 'bilingual ballot' provisions of the Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965 and expanded a decade later to remove language barriers to voting by prohibiting English-only elections in certain jurisdictions, remain a subject of intense debate in election law and American politics. This book offers the first-ever comprehensive examination of the subject, making a persuasive case for the provisions and investigating the sources and consequences of the controversy surrounding them.

James Thomas Tucker is a voting rights attorney whose areas of expertise include race and redistricting, and language accessibility. He has worked with the Native American Rights Fund and the U.S. Department of Justice, and has published more than a dozen journal articles and book chapters on minority voting rights.

Contents: Preface; Part I Remedies for Language Minority Voters before 1975: Literacy test bans before 1975; Language assistance for voters before 1975. Part II The Language Assistance Amendments to the Voting Rights Act: Special protections for language minority voters since 1975; Language assistance and voter assistance since 1975. Part III The Need for Language Assistance and its Availability, Quality and Cost: The July 2002 determinations and Section 203 coverage; Implementation and cost of language assistance in covered jurisdictions. Part IV The Debate Over Reauthorization of the VRA's Language Assistance Provisions in 2006: Passage of the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization Act of 2006; Debunking 10 myths about language assistance. Part V A Case Study of Discrimination: Alaska Natives: Discrimination against Alaska natives; Remedying language discrimination in the Bethel census area of Alaska. Part VI Commentaries and Appendices: Essays on language assistance under the VRA; Selected bibliography; Indexes.