To build vote bias case, US sought reports

In building a case against the City of Boston for alleged discrimination against Hispanic and Asian-American voters, the US Justice Department collected reports from several community groups detailing numerous voting irregularities.

They include alleged instances when voters were not allowed to cast ballots, when limited-English speakers were denied translation services, and in one case when a community volunteer cast ballots for a busload of Vietnamese immigrants.

MassVOTE, Viet-AID, and the Chinese Progressive Association, among others, turned over records to the Justice Department, workers with the organizations said yesterday. The records included case reports from voters and poll observers during elections in the past two years, some as recently as a special legislative primary in March.

One group that stationed observers inside the polls and researchers outside to interview voters said it was taken aback by what it found.

''It's really astounding," said Thao Tran, senior community organizer at Viet-AID.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino maintained yesterday that the city had not wronged minority voters and said he is eager to prove it. ''I can't wait to fight this in court," he said in his first public comments on the voting rights lawsuit filed Friday by the Justice Department, which wants to oversee local elections through 2007.

Menino said his administration has worked with Secretary of State William F. Galvin's office to correct any concerns. ''As mayor I'd be foolhardy not to have an election that works," the mayor said before teeing off at a charity golf tournament in Hingham.

But Menino's main opponent for reelection this fall, City Councilor Maura Hennigan, said the mayor is being stubborn and frivolous to fight the federal government, wasting resources better spent on fixing city elections. She plans to call this week for a hearing to examine Menino's decision.

''This is taxpayers' money that he is fighting with," she said.

Justice Department officials declined to comment on their investigation yesterday, but said that in the past 20 years they have never lost a case similar to the one against Boston.

The department says it has been pressing the city to guarantee minority voting rights since 1992. Groups lodged complaints with the city and Galvin's office before contacting Justice officials for help. While Justice officials won't detail the allegations of discrimination, the community groups believe their reports helped form the basis for the lawsuit.

Some Boston-based community groups that submitted reports to the department count Chinese, Vietnamese, and Latino immigrants among their members.

Viet-AID submitted about 30 cases of Vietnamese immigrants having problems at the polls. Some couldn't get translation help at polling places in Brighton, while others without identification were turned away rather than allowed to cast provisional ballots, Tran said. A community volunteer who drove seven people to a polling site in Dorchester reportedly entered the polls with them, filled out their ballots, and cast them.

''When a lady asked him, 'Can I vote now?' he said, 'I already voted for you,' " Tran said. ''How in the world could an election officer overlook that?"

Tran said that nearly half of those with problems were first-time US voters.

A worker at one group said reports submitted to Justice officials also detailed instances when Latino voters were denied translation services at the polls. The worker, who did not want to be identified because Justice officials had not granted permission to talk publicly about their investigation, said the group reported that it had registered hundreds of first-time voters last year but the city's Election Department failed to process many of their registration forms.

''They were turned away even though they were registered," the worker said.

At the Chinese Progressive Association, Executive Director Lydia Lowe said some of the cases her group reported included instances during an election last year when city poll workers allegedly filled in voters' ballots without being asked. In Chinatown, poll workers allegedly let people who had not registered to vote in previous elections fill out provisional ballots, a violation of election regulations, while some people who had registered in previous elections reportedly were not allowed to fill out provisional ballots.The Chinese Progressive Association reported a shortage of translation services at polling places. ''Chinese voters called CPA and asked us to go translate for them so they could vote," Lowe said.

In its lawsuit filed in US District Court, the Justice Department alleges that the city effectively denied limited-English speakers the right to vote by not providing election materials translated into Spanish, by not providing enough bilingual workers at the polls, and by ''improperly influencing, coercing, or ignoring the ballot choices" of Hispanic and Asian-American voters.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.