Polls should be made easily accessible to all citizens;
VOTING RIGHTS

By Mary Sanchez

Voting should not be difficult.

Not now, not in the United States, not as the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act approaches on Saturday.

And yet, listen to what is being heard by a national commission studying voting rights:

An Arizona election official reported questioning the citizenship of about 90 percent of the voters. Who are these questionable voters? They are the first Americans, members of the Apache nation. Their tribal identification cards do not have enough information to meet new state criteria intended to weed out voter fraud. There also were stories of native people born on tribal lands who lack birth certificates to prove they are in fact U.S. citizens and therefore eligible to vote.

Another problem affected poor white rural voters who have post office boxes instead of numbered addresses. That's a concern when poll workers insist on a home address for identification.

Some Latinos in Nevada reportedly were told they may only vote once, so some people voted in the primary election and then did not vote in the general election.
Or people were inaccurately told and unfortunately believed that they needed a driver's license to vote.

And there were reports of Latinos filling out voter registration forms then later finding their forms in a dumpster.

These are just some of the many stories that members of the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act heard during their first four hearings this year.

Another trick heard by the commissioners: Voters were told the polls would stay open until 9 p.m., so they could come after finishing a day at work. When the late workers arrived, the polls had been closed for several hours.

Immigrants, Spanish-speaking people and those speaking Asian dialects do not always get the language assistance required under the Voting Rights Act, speakers have been telling the commissioners.

In Arizona, some black citizens were told there were no more ballots, so they couldn't vote. Others were told they were in the wrong precinct, despite having voted there for more than a decade and the boundaries hadn't changed.

More hearings are scheduled around the country this summer and fall. The sessions are leading up to the congressional reauthorization of portions of the Voting Rights Act in 2007.

The problems appear to be nationwide, something that surprised the commissioners, said Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Just to be clear: black people's right to vote does not have to be reapproved by Congress. That is an old Internet-fueled hoax that has spread for years among African-American communities.

But the portions of the Voting Rights Act that are up for re-authorization are definitely needed to address problems. Things like the government's right to send election examiners and observers where they suspect abuses.

Evidence shows election observers have the effect of light on cockroaches -- problems disappear.

Congress also needs to support provisions ordering bilingual language assistance in areas with high concentrations of U.S. citizens with limited English abilities.

For those who question that, recall the last ballot you read on a complicated zoning or bond issue. The legal wording is often confusing to even highly literate English speakers.
Imagine if English were not your first language? If say, you arrived in the United States as an adult immigrant. These U.S. citizens have the same right to vote as their natural-born peers.

As of 2002, jurisdictions in 30 states (including portions of Kansas) fell under the language provisions.

Congress should recall that before the Voting Rights Act, many tricks, even outright violence, kept African Americans from voting.

Remember literacy tests -- insane provisions where black people were asked to recite documents like the Declaration of Independence, and when they couldn't were told they were not eligible to vote?

Such tests were deplorable enough. But recall that some people resorted to murder to control election outcomes, most famously the three civil rights workers killed for registering black voters in Mississippi.

Thankfully, the current problems do not rise to that level.

In fact, some problems are not intentionally designed to keep people from voting.

But intent is not the issue. Result should be the focus.

And far too many people are still having difficulty casti