Que morona!!

Hmmm. We here in Orange Co. had a bilingual ballot.

Still, the lady is a moran. We had the sample ballot well in advance. She had time to understand it. And assistance is provided at the polls.

Billy Milano unavailable for comment.

Hay Zeus Cristo, Y I thoughto mi Espanolo suckedo los dickos del burros.

Was it that hard to decide between McCain-o, Obama-o, or Nader-o?

flixter: Was it that hard to decide between McCain-o, Obama-o, or Nader-o?

We had three pages of ballot initiatives. And trust me, some of them were had enough to understand as a native English speaker.

/still no excuse

Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they?

Didn't they?

Snot Monster from Outer Space: Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they?

Didn't they?

Well, they DID write it in English, not in Heathen-ese.

Came here for the assertions that she probably came here illegally. Even though she's Puerto Rican.

Left disappointed. (Only five comments in, I know!)

Just don't let her answer the phone.

Kar98: Snot Monster from Outer Space: Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they?

Didn't they?

Well, they DID write it in English, not in Heathen-ese.

HEY! I speak Heathenese, and I'll thank YOU not to trample on my sacred mother tongue!! You elitist Americans think every should speak English or go back to Heathania, but America is a melting pot, and if this lady is in a county that meets the federal requir...she's not? Have a nice glass of STFU.

Kar98: Snot Monster from Outer Space: Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they?

Well, actually, if you go based on the framer's intent, yeah, they probably did expect that everyone would speak English. They probably would be pretty po'd by all of this.

/just saying.

Apparently Spanish has changed a lot since I last spoke it.

alternative girlfriend: Kar98: Snot Monster from Outer Space: Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they?

Well, actually, if you go based on the framer's intent, yeah, they probably did expect that everyone would speak English. They probably would be pretty po'd by all of this.

/just saying.

So...which of the framers many comments on this issue would you care to quote to back that claim up?

Snot Monster from Outer Space: So...which of the framers many comments on this issue would you care to quote to back that claim up?

I don't, at the moment. But, we're talking about people who assumed they had a great deal of cultural superiority. It's not that much of a stretch to imagine they believed English would be the dominant language in this country. The concept of a national language didn't come out for a long time (until the rise of nationalism), but if it had existed at that point, they probably would have chosen English as the national language.

Not only that, but at the time, anyone who did come to this country not only already speaking English was expected to learn it. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Most nations have an official language.

There is nothing wrong with having an (singular) official language, in fact there are many benefits.

From age 9 to 18 i lived in Germany. i didn't expect Germans to learn my language (though many did). So i learned enough German to get by.

When you MOVE to another country, YOU accommodate your HOST. Not the other way around.

The framers should have written "English of GtFo". It has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with common sense and fairness.

As I heard it, the Founding Fathers at least tossed around the idea of making German the official language of the USA, out of sheer disgust with the British. That is, before they decided that the idea of an "official language" was silly.

I went to an American movie in Switzerland that had subtitles. They took up the bottom half of the screen -- German, French, and Italian. Thankfully no Romansk.

Snot Monster from Outer Space
which of the framers many comments on this issue would you care to quote to back that claim up?

"Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?" Benjamin Franklin

"It had never been the custom in England to translate the laws into Welsh or Gaelic, and yet the great bulk of the Welsh, and some hundred thousands of people in Scotland, did not understand a word of English." Rep. Wm. Murray, Maryland

In 1811, President James Madison signed the Louisiana Enabling Act, establishing the conditions under which Louisiana could become a state. It required the laws, records, and written proceedings of the new state to be in English.

Six years after the Constitution took effect, Congress deliberately rejected a request to publish copies of federal laws in German.

Pestifer: As I heard it, the Founding Fathers at least tossed around the idea of making German the official language of the USA, out of sheer disgust with the British. That is, before they decided that the idea of an "official language" was silly.

And if you eat pop-rocks and drink a coke, your stomach will explode!

Seriously, you never heard of Snopes?

Wow, thanks Wraithbane. I'm too lazy to look into that sort of stuff. It just seemed logical given the time period and the other actions of the founding fathers.

Wraithbane: In 1811, President James Madison signed the Louisiana Enabling Act, establishing the conditions under which Louisiana could become a state. It required the laws, records, and written proceedings of the new state to be in English.

Now we have French along with English as official state languages.

Interesting tidbit: There is no official language of the USA. Yeah, we use English, but it's not a law. It's only a law at the state level.

NicoFinn : Interesting tidbit: There is no official language of the USA. Yeah, we use English, but it's not a law. It's only a law at the state level.


Very true. Some of use would like that changed.

Ay, que lastima!

Snot Monster from Outer Space: Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they? Didn't they?

Here are the top 20 non-English languages spoken in the U.S., according to Wikipedia:

Spanish
Chinese
French
German
Tagalog
Vietnamese
Italian
Korean
Russ ian
Polish
Arabic
Portuguese
Japanese
French Creole
Greek
Hindi
Persian
Urdu
Gujarati
Armenian

All of them have at least 200,000 speakers, so they represent potenitally significant numbers of votes.

How many of these languages do you think that the government should be required to support for purposes of voting? At whose expense are the translated ballots to be prepared? Whose job would it be to certify that the translations on the ballots (particularly for ballot initiatives, which as Diogenes pointed out can be confusing enough in English) are accurate and unbiased? And at whose expense should the government handle legal challenges that arise over claims of poor or inaccurate translation? Who pays for the inevitable legal challenges over languages that don't get their own ballots?


I think that the issue is just a little more complex than your idiotic comment makes it seem.

This biatch is probably one of those biatches who is like 1/256th Pto. Rican. Time to dispatch the wambulance.

In pto rico, the Official language(s) are Spanish & English. Nice try you dumb coont.

Wraithbane: Snot Monster from Outer Space
which of the framers many comments on this issue would you care to quote to back that claim up?

"Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?" Benjamin Franklin

"It had never been the custom in England to translate the laws into Welsh or Gaelic, and yet the great bulk of the Welsh, and some hundred thousands of people in Scotland, did not understand a word of English." Rep. Wm. Murray, Maryland

In 1811, President James Madison signed the Louisiana Enabling Act, establishing the conditions under which Louisiana could become a state. It required the laws, records, and written proceedings of the new state to be in English.

Six years after the Constitution took effect, Congress deliberately rejected a request to publish copies of federal laws in German.

Well done. You got a quotation from Benjamin Franklin from 1751, a statement he came to regret and which probably cost him a Philadelphia county election in 1764. The pamphlet from which it is drawn is perhaps one of the most unpleasant Franklin ever wrote--it is mostly about preserving the "white people" by "excluding all blacks and tawneys" from America. If that's your idea of a noble precedent, so be it.

You also got that quotation from Murray on the occasion of the debate about publishing the laws in German that you mention (you set that up as if it's two separate instances, it's not). But notice that this was something that needed to be debated. At the time, the house committee recommended publishing the laws in German, the House couldn't come to agreement on the issue. Some, as you say, argued against the proposal, others, such as Rep. Thomas Hartley argued for it:

"it was perhaps desirable that the Germans should learn English; but if it is our object to give present information, we should do it in the language understood. The Germans who are advanced in years cannot learn our language in a day. It would be generous in the Government to inform those persons. Many honest men, in the late disturbances, were led away by misrepresentation; ignorance of the laws laid them open to deception."

Much of the argument against publishing the laws in two languages had to do with potential problems that might arise owing to confusion (if the implications of the German version and the English version were slightly different, for example). The same debate arose in 1810 when Michigan petitioned the Government to produce a French language version of the US laws. Again, the House decided to vote against this not on the grounds that English was implicitly or explicitly the "official language" of the USA but because of potential confusion.

So, we have one Founding Father who has a racist little tantrum in 1751 putting a sad black mark on his name, and we have for the rest of it a pretty even-sided debate about publishing legislation in more than one language which does not appeal to any idea of the inherent primacy of English but largely to pragmatic matters of cost and potential confusion.

So no, I don't think that this amounts to a compelling case that the Founding Fathers thought there was an implicit case for English as an Official Language in the Constitution.

Cybernetic: Snot Monster from Outer Space: Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they? Didn't they?

Here are the top 20 non-English languages spoken in the U.S., according to Wikipedia:

Spanish
Chinese
French
German
Tagalog
Vietnamese
Italian
Korean
Russ ian
Polish
Arabic
Portuguese
Japanese
French Creole
Greek
Hindi
Persian
Urdu
Gujarati
Armenian

All of them have at least 200,000 speakers, so they represent potenitally significant numbers of votes.

How many of these languages do you think that the government should be required to support for purposes of voting? At whose expense are the translated ballots to be prepared? Whose job would it be to certify that the translations on the ballots (particularly for ballot initiatives, which as Diogenes pointed out can be confusing enough in English) are accurate and unbiased? And at whose expense should the government handle legal challenges that arise over claims of poor or inaccurate translation? Who pays for the inevitable legal challenges over languages that don't get their own ballots?


I think that the issue is just a little more complex than your idiotic comment makes it seem.

Of course there comes a point where there are too few speakers of a given language for ballot papers in that language to be offered as an option. That does not mean that this woman is a "dumbass" or unreasonable to ask the court to rule on whether that applies to the case of Spanish speakers in her district. She will make her case in court and the court will decide if the case is reasonable or not. That seems an entirely satisfactory process to me.

It's reasonable for her, as a speaker of the USA's second most common language, to hope that ballot papers could be provided to her in her primary language. It's reasonable for the county officials to want to keep the cost of administering the election down. It's reasonable for the courts to step in and adjudicate which of these two competing reasonable desires should prevail.

Sometimes there really aren't any villains in the piece.

moistD

Thank you.

Cybernetic: Snot Monster from Outer Space: Yes, heaven forbid that the state should make an effort to ensure that all it's citizens can cast an informed vote. After all, the founders did put "Speak English or go fark yourselves" in big bold letters in the Constitution, didn't they? Didn't they?

Here are the top 20 non-English languages spoken in the U.S., according to Wikipedia:

Spanish
Chinese
French
German
Tagalog
Vietnamese
Italian
Korean
Russ ian
Polish
Arabic
Portuguese
Japanese
French Creole
Greek
Hindi
Persian
Urdu
Gujarati
Armenian

All of them have at least 200,000 speakers, so they represent potenitally significant numbers of votes.

How many of these languages do you think that the government should be required to support for purposes of voting? At whose expense are the translated ballots to be prepared? Whose job would it be to certify that the translations on the ballots (particularly for ballot initiatives, which as Diogenes pointed out can be confusing enough in English) are accurate and unbiased? And at whose expense should the government handle legal challenges that arise over claims of poor or inaccurate translation? Who pays for the inevitable legal challenges over languages that don't get their own ballots?


I think that the issue is just a little more complex than your idiotic comment makes it seem.


Is that list in any order?

apeiron242: Most nations have an official language.

There is nothing wrong with having an (singular) official language, in fact there are many benefits.

From age 9 to 18 i lived in Germany. i didn't expect Germans to learn my language (though many did). So i learned enough German to get by.

When you MOVE to another country, YOU accommodate your HOST. Not the other way around.

The framers should have written "English of GtFo". It has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with common sense and fairness.

THIS.

Snot Monster from Outer Space:
Of course there comes a point where there are too few speakers of a given language for ballot papers in that language to be offered as an option.

Yes...if only there was some sort of measuring point. Perhaps, say, if 5 percent of a county's residents have limited English abilities, then the county is required by federal law to print bilingual ballots.

Did you not read the article? You argue against this, offer a solution, and seem to miss the point that the solution is being implemented.

5% actually seems pretty low to me, but that's what the law states. And they're following it.

The woman should either learn English or move to a place that has bilingual ballots. But she has decided to sue. So yes, she's an idiot.

apeiron242: When you MOVE to another country, YOU accommodate your HOST. Not the other way around.

This, and English isn't my native language either. It's not even my second language.

ThoughtSpy: Snot Monster from Outer Space:
Of course there comes a point where there are too few speakers of a given language for ballot papers in that language to be offered as an option.

Yes...if only there was some sort of measuring point. Perhaps, say, if 5 percent of a county's residents have limited English abilities, then the county is required by federal law to print bilingual ballots.

Did you not read the article? You argue against this, offer a solution, and seem to miss the point that the solution is being implemented.

5% actually seems pretty low to me, but that's what the law states. And they're following it.

The woman should either learn English or move to a place that has bilingual ballots. But she has decided to sue. So yes, she's an idiot.

No, I read the article. That 5% threshold isn't some kind of constitutional absolute. As I said, it's perfectly possible that she will lose in court and rightly lose in court. That doesn't make what she wants unreasonable. This strikes me as precisely the kind of issue that should be taken up by a court.

What I was objecting to in my post was the large number of people in this thread who think that this woman is a "biatch" or a "moran." Her desire to have complex ballot materials in a language she can understand is an entirely reasonable desire. The desire of the county to save costs by not producing multiple versions of ballots is a reasonable desire. The courts are the appropriate places to sort out these competing goods.

As I say, sometimes there simply isn't a villain in the piece.

I could only understand about every other word in the headline, but I could still pronounce it with the small level of Spanish I have studied so far. I say she knew enough to vote, if not neccesarily to vote for the person she wanted to. Viva America!