Voting rights advocates in Pa. recruit interpreters, multilingual poll workers

Three counties in the commonwealth are required to provide Spanish translation at the polls.

• Alanna Elder/WITF
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  Alanna Elder was a Report for America corps member who covered Latinos in central Pennsylvania and the 2020 election.

(Reading) — This year is Sara Torres’ first presidential election coordinating bilingual services for Berks County. She is no stranger to the process, however. She worked elections for years in Puerto Rico. At a recent training for poll interpreters, she said, “The culture shock was amazing – I couldn’t comprehend, why are we going to vote and then going to work?”

In Puerto Rico, Election Day is an official holiday.

“In Puerto Rico, you wake up early, you decide who’s going to bring the rice, who’s going to bring the meat,” she said.

Now, Torres’ job is to ensure Spanish speakers in the county have access to translation at the polls. Some of the first lessons include: Don’t ask people to show their ID, unless the poll book said otherwise. If you are not finding a voter’s last name in the rolls, remember to check if they have two, or a different spelling than you assume – Veras, for example, can begin with a “B” or a “V.”

“One of the things that was in the lawsuit, back in 2002, was that Spanish-speaking citizens felt attacked because they were being questioned,” she said. “And that’s why we’re here.”

In 2003, the United States won a voting rights lawsuit against Berks County. A U.S. District court ruled the county had discriminated against Latino voters and ordered several changes to protocol.

But it is not just Berks that is required to have interpreters at the polls. In Lehigh and Philadelphia counties, the population of Spanish speakers is high enough to trigger Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which entitles voters to translated election materials and services.

 The three counties need to recruit additional poll workers, as campaigns across the country urge people to help avert shortages. Some voting rights advocates see this as a chance to bring new people into the process, by serving as election staff.

 “Every vote counts”

In Pennsylvania, Section 203 applies in counties where at least 10,000 voting-age citizens speak the same language with limited English-speaking ability, or where five percent of the county’s population belongs to the same minority language group. In Berks County, 14,612 Spanish-speaking citizens over 18 speak English “less than very well”, according to the U.S. Census’ 2018 five-year estimate. Some 23,003 people fit into the same category in Lehigh. After the 2020 Census, the law may apply to more counties, and in Philadelphia, other languages.

Erika Sutherland is a Spanish professor at Muhlenberg College. She helps recruit and train interpreters in Lehigh County.

“That’s not a huge number, but even one vote counts. Every vote counts,” she said.  

Sutherland usually spends Election Day visiting polling sites, dropping off snacks and checking on interpreters. She has encountered some election judges who don’t understand the legal requirement.  

“We literally have had judges kick interpreters out of the site and say, ‘Well, you have to wait outside. You can’t be inside the polling place,’” she said.

The last time she witnessed this was in November 2018. But, Sutherland is also concerned with little details that may confuse or deter voters, like the no-parking signs outside her own polling place. She questions a plan in Berks County to use virtual interpreters in some places.

“If people have to actually ask someone, who may or may not be posing a welcoming face, to have them pull out a phone interpreter.” she said, “That’s a lot of hurdles to put between a voter and the civic right to vote.”

Sara Torres defends the strategy as the best way to divide resources. She said virtual interpreters will be available through video chat, and only at sites where zero to just a couple voters have requested one in the past.

At a recent count, 83 interpreters have signed up to work the election in Berks County — out of a goal of 100.

Lehigh was looking for 21 more, out of 91.

Both counties also have multilingual poll workers who won’t be working strictly as interpreters.

“An opportunity to change the culture”

 There is a major push to make sure there are enough poll workers in general this year, since the coronavirus poses safety risks to elderly people and poll workers are typically older.

Al-Sharif Nassef is with the Pennsylvania chapter of All Voting is Local, one of several organizations informing voters and encouraging people to sign up to work the polls. There have been challenges to civic and community groups helping with these efforts in the past. In 2018, Nassef said, the group recruited more than 1,000 poll workers in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties. But, some were not placed.

“Partly, that was because of the strict laws in Pennsylvania, where the poll worker has to be from that district or precinct,” he said. Proposed election changes sitting in the state General Assembly would loosen that restriction, but the legislature will not reconvene until Oct. 19. That’s two weeks and one day from the election.

Nassef mentioned the issue in a virtual meeting on Section 203 in August. Erika Jufre, who oversees interpreter recruitment in Lehigh County, committed to placing any poll workers community organizations bring.  

Next to the urgency of preventing a poll worker shortage and protecting the elderly, Nassef sees another goal.

“You can imagine the hostility that people will face if they can’t speak English as well as a native speaker, and so, this is an opportunity to change the culture at the polling locations,” he said.

By recruiting diverse and multilingual poll workers, organizations like his hope to make the election process, “reflect the growing diversity of our community and are less at risk from the pandemic.”

 “Flexing the civic muscle”

Kaylee Carpintyero, now 26, served as a poll worker during Reading’s municipal election last year. It was a much slower day than this year’s will likely be. It began for Carpinteyro in the county office. About six hours later, she was dispatched to an elementary school on the northern edge of the city.

She said the other poll workers seemed well-practiced at the job and surprised to see someone so young.

“I really grabbed their attention. I guess it’s something new that they’d never really seen,” she said.

She remembers helping between 5 and ten people that day from a table that was separate from the other poll workers. She said she felt welcome, but could also see how some first-time voters could feel nervous or uncomfortable.

“There is a majority of older people, and a majority of them were white,” she said. “And of course, it does make a little barrier, because you know, white supremacy, it is a tension.”

Carpinteyro was planning to work the polls again, but a new job with a new schedule may prevent her from doing so. She is pushing some of her friends to sign up, without much luck. One obstacle, especially for friends who are not citizens, is the requirement that poll workers be registered to vote in the precinct. The rule allows some exceptions for students and appears to leave a gray area for poll interpreters.

In fact, Sara Torres said all poll workers in Berks County must be registered to vote. In the past, the rule excepted high school students who are under 18, but “for safety reasons”, young students won’t be working the General Election this year.

In contrast, Erika Sutherland billed interpretation as a “great way of flexing the civic muscle without breaking any laws.” She said since most of the interpreters she recruits are college students, who are generally *not* registered to vote in Lehigh County (and in some cases are not even registered to vote at all), she’s been working on the understanding that there is no requirement that poll interpreters be registered voters.

Beyond Section 203

In places like Lancaster County, where interpreters are not legally required, but where the voting population is still linguistically diverse, recruiting poll workers who happen to speak other languages may be even more critical. The head of the county election’s office said staff will place poll workers who mark that they are multilingual at sites where more voters may need assistance. Bilingual staff at the election office in neighboring York County provide Spanish interpretation over the phone.

At the training in Reading, Sara Torres reminded interpreters, people are already voting. Especially since they would be working Election Day, she encouraged them to vote by mail or drop off a mail-in ballot at the election’s office.

Voters across the state have a couple other options. They can bring someone to help them vote, just not their employer or union representative – and the Department of State has said it will provide interpreters via its election’s hotline, 1-877-VOTESPA. 

 

WITF’s Alanna Elder is part of the “Report for America” program — a national service effort that places journalists in newsrooms across the country to report on under-covered topics and communities.