« Alabama: Foley will not allow annexed residents to vote in city council election | Main | Massachusetts: same-day registration bill before Senate today »

Alaska: Yup'ik ballots not requied, court rules

The Bristol Bay Times reports: The state of Alaska cannot legally be required to provide written voting materials in Yup’ik.

The ruling, made Tuesday, July 8, by U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess, was handed down just before a three-judge panel heard arguments on whether the state of Alaska and the city of Bethel should be required, by court order, to provide Yup'ik-speaking voters with other forms of language assistance in upcoming elections.

Such assistance would include Yup’ik-speaking translators.

There is no date set on when the panel of federal judges will hand down their ruling.

Burgess' ruling was based on a section of the Voting Rights Act that declares that, if a language is “historically unwritten,” a state would only have to provide oral voting assistance for speakers of that minority language. -- The Bristol BayTimes - State won't put Yup'ik on ballots

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.votelaw.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5003

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)