Election officials puzzled by bilingual no-shows

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004 | 9:36 a.m.

The Clark County Election Department needs at least 100 people who speak Spanish and English to work the polls Nov. 2, after twice that number -- or half of all bilingual workers who had signed up -- failed to show up to work the Sept. 7 primary election.

There were far more no-shows and cancellations by the bilingual poll workers, percentage-wise, than there were from the pool of other poll workers, where the rate was 15 percent, officials said.

It provides another view of the schism between Hispanic population numbers and participation in the political process, local experts said.

"It's frustrating," said Elsa Garcia, departmental administrator at the Election Department and the person in charge of outreach to the Hispanic population.

"We're sitting here trying to figure out what works in terms of getting the Latino population involved," Garcia said.

She said the bilingual workers are needed not only because it's the right thing to do but because without them the county could be accused of breaking a federal law regulating elections and foreign languages. That could provide the basis for a lawsuit against the county as well, she said.

The law says assistance must be given at the polls in any language spoken by more than 5 percent of the voting-aged population.

But as election Registrar Larry Lomax noted, "it's an ongoing challenge" to meet the requirements of the law.

The law is part of the Voting Rights Act, but the Census Bureau had the job of directing Clark County in June 2002 to make materials related to voting available in Spanish, Lomax said. In the municipal elections later that year, bilingual workers signed up for 50 of the county's 329 polling sites.

There were "some no-shows" that time around. But when an attempt to man all of the sites was made in the weeks leading up this month's primaries, cancellations and flat-out no-shows added up to 200 of the 400 that had committed to the effort -- or 50 percent, Lomax said.

Of 4,600 remaining poll workers, 701, or 15 percent, canceled or didn't show up.

Lomax said he didn't know why there was such a large difference in follow-through between the two groups of poll workers, but noted that "a lot of our poll workers from the general population are seniors who are more available and have worked the election for a long time."

The bilingual workers, meanwhile, "are younger and are actually looking for work" when they sign up for the job.

Brian Ayala, who as chairman of the government affairs committee of the Latin Chamber of Commerce has been working on a media campaign to get more Hispanics registered and to the polls, said he thought the economic pull was the main reason bilingual poll workers have been hard to hold on to.

"They grasp at this as a temporary stepping stone, and then another thing comes up and they take it," Ayala said.

"The general population may see it as more of a patriotic thing and don't need the income as much," he said.

The poll worker job requires attendance at a three-hour training session and pays $120 for a day's work.

Ayala said increasing Hispanic participation in elections is "not going to come overnight."

"But with all the attention being paid to Latinos in the elections nationally and locally ... I think they will come to see it as a way to empower themselves," he said.