Bilingual ballots approved for Cuyahoga County

CLEVELAND - In a tie-breaking vote, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner late Wednesday approved an agreement between the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and the U.S. Department of Justice paving the way for bilingual ballots.

The agreement calls for a phasing in that will take place over the next eight months. 

The first phase will come next Tuesday for the Sept. 7 primary election. Seventy-one precincts that have more than 100 registered voters with Hispanic surnames will be met with poster sized sample ballots when they go to the polls to aid them in voting. 

In addition, a good faith effort will be make to recruit bilingual poll workers to work in those precincts.

By November's general election the actual ballots and voting instructions in those 71 precincts will be bilingual.  The county will also hire at least one bilingual poll worker for each precinct.

For the May 3, 2011 primary though the changes will be in place county wide with ballots and all voting materials in county being in English and Spanish.

The agreement puts the county in compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and avoids a Federal lawsuit that could have forced the changes immediately.

Under the Act Puerto Rican voters who are educated in an American Flagged school in their native Spanish cannot be denied access when it comes to voting.

"It's an issue about the rights of citizens of the United States of America," said U.S. Attorney for Northern Ohio Steven Dettlebach.  "Citizens of Cuyahoga County to have full and equal access to the vote."

Board member Rob Frost, while recognizing that steps needed to be taken, questioned the expense of forcing bilingual ballots county wide.  "We're being asked to commit to a remedy now that we know will cost three times roughly the cost of a target remedy," said Frost.

But Dettlebach says keeping the solution limited only to the 71 precincts was never up for debate.  "We don't need a segregated approach we don't need an approach where somebody who moves from the westside of Cleveland to Westlake or Pepper Pike or over to Shaker Heights have to leave their sacred voting rights back in their old neighborhood," he said.

Cuyahoga County has over 30,000 people of Puerto Rican descent, a number that continues to grow.