Voting rights, not 'Sticky Rice'

SECRETARY OF STATE William Galvin is caught in the weeds on the question of transliterating candidates' names for Chinese voters in Boston. As the state's chief election officer, he should be pushing ahead for a solution that makes voting as convenient as possible, not clinging to the belief that there is no reasonable way to use Chinese characters as an aid for voters who don't read English.

In 2005, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the City of Boston for violating the Voting Rights Act based, in part, on allegations that city poll workers were coercing voters who spoke little or no English. The settlement agreement called for the city to translate ballot instructions and candidate names into Chinese. Galvin fully supports the bilingual ballot instructions and pushed for the presence of Chinese translators at the polls. But he draws the line -- an artificial one, we believe -- at transliterating the names of candidates, after consulting with language experts who say there is no precise way to perform that task. Attempts at transliteration, insists Galvin, devolve into absurdity, as candidates emerge with names equivalent to "Sticky Rice," "Mosquito Stick," "Virtue Soup," and "Imbecile."

Ideally, anyone going to the polls would know enough English to function in the majority language. But the federal government rightly recognizes that the power of voting trumps language skills. There are important exceptions to the requirement that anyone eligible for naturalization must be able to read, write, and speak basic English as well as possess a basic knowledge of US civics. People over the age of 55 who have lived in the United States as permanent residents for at least 15 years, for example, are not required to take an English test and can take the civics test in the language of their choice. The testing rules are even less stringent for people over 65.

Yesterday, elderly voters from Boston's Chinatown rallied at the State House to say that transliteration is key to voter participation in their neighborhoods. They explained that they read a lively Chinese-language press that routinely transliterates English names into Chinese. This has never been a drawback in their understanding of the news, and it shouldn't be a problem at the ballot box, either. Many of them turned out for the special City Council election in May, when Boston provided Chinese-language ballots with the name of candidates in Roman letters next to their Chinese transliterations. A September special election to replace state Senator Jarrett Barrios will offer another chance to check the quality of the transliteration system.

"If there is precise way to do this, then I'll agree to it," says Galvin.

That's a good opening for mediation. Galvin and the Chinese voting-rights advocates should get to work.