For some in Beverly Hills, new ballots went too Farsi

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- "Have you seen your ballot?" Gloria Seiff asked friend and fellow Beverly Hills resident Betty Harris over the phone.

Harris had not. She opened the mail-in ballot and took one look. "I was shocked by it," she said.

For the first time, Beverly Hills had translated its entire absentee and sample ballots into Persian. The ballots for the March 6 municipal election, in which two City Council seats will be filled, went out this month, and the response was swift.

More than 300 residents phoned the city to complain. City Clerk Byron Pope fielded about 100 of them personally.

"I believe the cover is what shocked the community," said Pope, who had instructed the city's election materials supplier to print the entire ballot in English and Persian, also known as Farsi. "I believe it was the Farsi script, with the war going on and all," he said.

The translation is the latest measure of the growing Persian influence in Beverly Hills, where Persians now make up about one-fifth of the city's 35,000 residents.

The influx, which began in the late 1970s as wealthy Iranians clustered in Beverly Hills after the fall of the shah, has made a mark on many facets of the city, from architecture to the schools.

But it has caused friction, as in the case of the ballots. Some long-time residents have complained about newcomers tearing down historic homes in favor of what they consider monolithic white "Persian palaces."

Persians have flexed their political muscle by holding voter registration drives, electing the first Persian to the City Council in 2003, and making the Persian new year a holiday for students.

Three of the six candidates running for City Council were born in Iran, and Councilor Jimmy Delshad will serve as the city's first Persian mayor if he is reelected.

For Nanaz Pirnia, president of the Beverly Hills Iranian American Parents Association, the ballots are about making voting accessible to all in Beverly Hills.

"I'd rather see people understand the dynamics and what's going on, because voting is a very serious matter," she said.

But other residents say it works against the integration of the Persian community in the city.

"It sends a bad message," said Louis Lipofsky, a lawyer. "It's a message, which is divisive, which I believe is designed to separate as opposed to unite. In fact, it's done that."

On the ballot card, where voters make their marks, Spanish also appears, upping the number of languages on one page to three, and putting some voters off.

"It was a design error," said Rose Norton. "It really looked like a menu from a Farsi restaurant with a translation in English." Norton said she found it offensive and threw the sample ballot away after she cast her absentee vote.

Pope said the latest change was recommended by the city's supplier and printer, Martin & Chapman Co. of Anaheim, which has worked with several cities that are under federal consent decrees for not offering fully translated ballots. Though Beverly Hills is not one , Martin & Chapman suggested the change as a precaution, Pope said.

The federal Voting Rights Act requires counties only to make election materials available in other languages, not to send the full translations to all voters.