Nebraska County Refuses To Print Ballots In Spanish

By Dustin Mendus

Dodge County, Nebraska, is not going to produce any bilingual ballots for next election year and beyond, despite the population being 10% Hispanic. The county clerk, Fred Mytty, told supervisors on last week that bilingual ballots are only necessary if a minority population exceeds 5%of the total population, and has a low literacy rate. Hispanics exceed this population threshold, but Mytty says that area schools have done a “good job” of raising literacy rate, so that it is above the national average.

The county’s Hispanic population doubled with the 2010 census, where it was previously 5%.

Mytty states that the county will “save a lot of money over the next ten years” with the change.

That’s charming, but strange. The population of Hispanics has doubled over ten years. Whereas, the types of schools that are “raising the literacy rate” is not known. Are these public K-12 schools, community colleges, or vocational schools? No idea. Without knowing what kind of schools these are, there is no way to tell if this growing community’s literacy rates are rising.

Students of Hispanic migrants might be English-literate in school, but that doesn’t mean they speak English at home with their parents of voting age. Never mind that, if this is strictly K-12 schools that are testing literacy rates, how do we know if any over 18 members of the Hispanic community here are experiencing this ‘growth in literacy rates’? We don’t. Even if the kids in these schools are reporting high literacy rates, and are also Hispanic, what age are they? What if it is five year old kids, and their parents aren’t learning English? Guess Mom and Dad aren’t voting. Well, at least it’s saving Dodge County money.

Dustin Mendus is an undergraduate student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He focuses on cultural geography.

[Photo By revger]

Subscribe today!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Must Read