Tribes ready for voting rules

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jul 28, 2006 | by PERRY SWANSON THE GAZETTE

Voters in two Colorado counties are assured the right to cast ballots in their native languages after President Bush signed a 25- year renewal of the Voting Rights Act on Thursday.

Originally passed in 1965, some provisions of the Voting Rights Act were scheduled to expire next year, including a rule requiring some counties to offer election procedures for people who speak American Indian languages. The rule applied to La Plata and Montezuma counties in southwestern Colorado, which have large American Indian populations.

Election officials in La Plata and Montezuma counties said they have interpreters for people who speak American Indian languages, but no one has ever requested help.

"The majority of the tribal members read English, and they don't request it," said La Plata County Clerk and Recorder Linda Daley.

The Ute language, Shoshonean, presents a unique challenge because it has no written component, Daley said, so tribal members are on standby on Election Day to interpret for anyone who makes a request.

La Plata County is home to the Southern Ute Indian tribe, which has 1,305 members, including 816 adults, according to its Web site. The tribe is a sovereign nation, in many ways independent of U.S. laws, but its members also may vote in U.S. elections.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2000 that La Plata County was home to 2,154 American Indians. The American Indian population in Montezuma County was 2,425, including 1,056 members of the Navajo tribe and 1,141 members of the Ute tribe, according to the Census Bureau.

Like Daley, Montezuma County Clerk and Recorder Carol Tullis said she would accommodate people who speak American Indian languages even if the law didn't require it.

The Voting Rights Act was a key victory for civil rights activists. It bans laws designed to keep minorities from voting such as requiring reading tests, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, which enforces the law. Advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union had lobbied for the act's expiring provisions to be renewed.

The ACLU issued a report in March detailing 293 lawsuits it has filed since 1982 that it says were intended to stop discrimination in voting. The ACLU filed one such case in Colorado, a 1989 lawsuit with the Ute Mountain Tribe in Montezuma County challenging the at- large method of electing local school board members. That method has board members elected by all the voters in the school district rather than only voters from a smaller geographic area inside the district.

A judge in the case ordered the school district to elect board members from separate areas, including one area with a majority of American Indians, the ACLU report said.

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