A case for bi-lingual Gov Forms
From today's Kane County Chronicle,
Two Elgin residents have found their way onto Kane County voting rolls despite not being citizens, officials said.
The two people contacted the clerk's office earlier this week to have their names removed from the list of registered voters, Deputy Clerk Jay Bennett said.
Non-U.S. citizens are not allowed to vote in U.S. elections.
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Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham said the illegal registrations occurred when the people used their green cards to obtain driver's licenses, then filled out the "motor-voter" application that the Illinois Secretary of State's Office gives with driver's-license applications or renewals.
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Secretary of state's office Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Jill Zwick said the motor-voter form was just an application and not a registration. The local election agency actually does the registration.
"In this case, it would be Kane County, Jack Cunningham's office," she said.
Zwick said the current form asked people to check three boxes.
"The first question is, 'Are you a citizen of the United States?'" she said. "It says next to them, 'If you answered 'no' to any of these questions, do not continue.'"
The form is only in English, she said.
5 comments:
I think it makes a case for immigrants, or illegals, to learn english. Now don't get me wrong, I am all for them keeping their heritage and culture, but I think a basic understanding of english should be expected of people living in America.
Robbie,
Current law requires immigrants applying for citizenship below a certain age to be able to communicate in English.
They also have to pass a test on the Constitution and history that most of the rest of us would fail.
Heaven forbid we acknowledge the fact not everyone living in this country is white and English-speaking.
burbs, who said being white has anything to do with it?
certainly not everyone in the U.S. or the world speaks english, but I think it should be a goal as a country to only have 1 language for governmental entities. I think for communications sake we need to have a 'primary' language that we can all communicate in. Because while spanish seems to be the popular alternative, not all immigrants speak it. Then we get into the pandora's box of always trying to include everyone else's language. Maybe we need every peice of state literature put out in spanish, french, german, chinese, japanese, mandarin, russian, and a multitude of arfican tribal dialects.
maybe the problem is motor-voter and tangling peoples applications for a drivers license with the right of citizens among them to vote...
...seems it's getting a little tangled in Kane County with the error on the side of lettting those not entitled too it; vote.
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