Yup’ik language-assisted primaries scrutinized

MARY LOCHNER
mlochner@alaskanewspapers.com

September 03, 2008 at 2:39PM AKST

The Alaska primary elections were watched for the outcome of contentious ballot measures.

But the results of an untried system to help Yupik speakers vote, used for the first time during the Aug. 26 primaries, are still coming in. Both sides in a lawsuit over the issue are watching those outcomes very closely.

“We’re in the process of gathering feedback from poll workers and voters,” said Natalie Landreth, legal counsel for the Native American Rights Fund. “From what we can tell, it’s been very uneven.”

The organization has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union in an ongoing lawsuit representing Yup’ik-speaking voters who say the state of Alaska and city of Bethel have failed their obligations to minority language speakers as required by the federal Voting Rights Act.

A federal judge in the suit ruled plaintiffs would suffer “immediate and irreparable injury,” if not provided assistance to fulfill their right to vote in primary elections. He ordered the state on July 29 to remedy the situation in time for the primaries.

The requirements included the placement of Yup’ik-English bilingual poll workers in every polling place with a significant number of Yup’ik voters – large portions of Western Alaska which are historically Yup’ik lands – and a standardized written Yup’ik translation of the ballots for poll workers to read aloud.

The state is required to submit a progress report in federal court within 30 days of the primary, on Sept. 26, to show how it all went.

“We’ve had quite a bit of feedback and it’s been pretty positive,” said Shelly Growden, election systems manager for the Alaska state Division of Eections.

Like NARF, the state government is gearing up to gather information from Yup’ik villages on how the language assistance system worked on voting day.

Growden said it will conduct telephone interviews with leaders in village councils.

Kevin Ramey, who sits on Togiak City Council, said he thought having a standard Yup’ik translation of the ballot for bilingual poll workers to read aloud to Yup’ik speakers was helpful for many voters in his community.

The Yup'ik-language ballots were read aloud, but voters were not allowed to see them. Ramey said that bothered some voters.

“People wanted to see the Yup’ik ballots,” Ramey said, “But I think having translators is a bit more in tune, as long as they can be neutral in explaining things.”

Growden said the reason voters weren’t allowed to see written Yup’ik ballots was because the U.S. Department of Justice has to approve any changes in the state’s language minority assistance program for voters, in the absence of a federal court order.

She said that Yup’ik ballots for voters to read, as well as other minority language assistance voting materials not mandated by the federal court order, could be implemented in 2009 if the state’s current requests for those changes to be made are approved.

Growden said she hopes leadership in village councils will feel comfortable being open about problems that might have occurred with the state’s system for assisting Yup’ik speakers in voting, as well as things that went well.

“We really need the feedback and if it’s not positive, that’s fine with us,” Growden said. “Then we know we’ve got to make some changes.”

Landreth said that NARF has already heard concerns from Yup'ik-speaking poll workers over alleged spelling and grammar errors in the translations. She said that the organization will have a fuller picture of how elections went in coming weeks.

She said that, if NARF finds that only a couple things went awry, they would likely be things that could be fixed by the state and nothing to make a to-do about. But if a significant number of reports of problems come in they’ll present that as a response in court to the state’s progress report.

“The bottom line is we want to make sure that what the state and city (of Bethel) do is not lip service, that it’s actually effective assistance, and that’s all we’re looking for,” Landreth said.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Burgess, who ruled in that the state must provide language assistance in time for primaries, is considering a request by the Yup’ik plaintiff’s attorneys to make a similar order to the city of Bethel, also a defendant in the suit, in time for its Oct. 7 municipal elections.

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 Mary Lochner can be reached at (907) 348-2438, or (800) 770-9830.