Piazza may back bilingual ballots

HAZLETON – Luzerne County Director of Elections Leonard Piazza will likely recommend to commissioners that the county have bilingual ballots for the 2010 election.

Piazza was in Hazleton on Sunday to answer poll-related questions and address some concerns of Latino and non-Latino candidates that centered on poll watchers and translators assisting Latinos at voting machines.

“Within the last few days of last week, we started to get a number of calls from the Hazleton area. It’s been a quiet election otherwise, and I was surprised that we have some concerns about the election down in Hazleton. … So I figured let’s go down there and see what we can do,” Piazza said after a meeting with Concerned Parents of the Hazleton Area.

He said that “for the minimal cost, it’s probably worth it” to make county ballots bilingual. He said his office would perform a cost analysis for a bilingual ballot and bilingual election informational materials and present it to commissioners sometime before the general election in November.

“I’ll let them know that I was down here and let them know not just what the concerns of the Latino community are, but of all of the other candidates that are running for office. You can take away the need for assistance if you provide the bilingual ballot. And anybody that wants instruction can get that instruction from a sample ballot prior to the election,” Piazza said.

Concerned Parents is an organization that formed about a year ago to address challenges for students and parents in the Hazleton Area School District. Although the group has many Latino members, group leaders have stressed that it is not a Latino organization.

The Latino population in the Hazleton area has grown significantly in the last decade. Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta has estimated Latinos comprise about 30 percent of the population of the city.

School board member Elaine Curry, who has been a steadfast supporter of the Concerned Parents group, said she had called Piazza a few times last week in her role as campaign manager for Ignacio Beato, a Latino candidate for Hazleton City Council.

Curry said Beato’s campaign team was “very concerned about making sure everyone knows exactly what the rules are and that we follow the rules” and that any Latinos who were less than proficient in English could get assistance if needed.

When Piazza offered to go to Hazleton to address concerns, Curry thought the Concerned Parents group would be a good forum. The group’s president, Eugenio Sosa, set up the meeting.

Piazza said he also received calls from non-Latino candidates who did not attend Sunday’s meeting but who had concerns about Latino poll watchers assisting voters at the machines.

“We tried to delineate the difference between instructing voters how to vote as opposed to telling them who to vote for. It’s a legitimate concern. And those (non-Latino) candidates were asking the question: ‘Why isn’t this ballot in two languages down here?’ And that kind of surprised me. You’re asking me why the ballot’s not in two languages? I was expecting the opposite,” Piazza said.

Piazza said the non-Latino candidates believe having bilingual ballots would eliminate the need for a poll watcher working for a Latino candidate to assist a Latino voter with limited English proficiency. The concern was that such assistance could inadvertently amount to influencing the voter on candidate selection.

Piazza told the group that poll watchers could act as translators and/or could assist voters if asked to do so by the voter.

He said any voter who needs assistance, whether it be because of a vision impairment, limited English proficiency or some other reasons, can have someone assist them at the voting machine. But the assistant cannot be a judge of election, the voter’s employer or a representative of a union to which the voter belongs.

Federico Rosario, a member of the group, asked if watchers can approach voters to offer help. Piazza said that should be done outside the polling place.

Another member, Alvaro Galliani, asked if watchers could wear pins identifying them as bilingual. Piazza said such pins are not restricted if they are not political.

Piazza said poll watchers or any member of the public who believes something improper has taken place at a polling location should call his office to report it.

The Bureau of Elections has had bilingual interpreter services since he’s been director of elections, Piazza said, but the services have hardly been used.

He said that as the Latino community grows and Latino candidates run for municipal and school board offices, “there are things we need to do a little differently in some aspects. Exactly what we need to do differently, that’s one of the reasons why I was here today, to try to get a little more information on what we might be doing right and what we need to be doing in the future,” Piazza said.

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Director of Elections speaks in Hazleton addressing concerns of Latino voters.

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