Show Ga Gam m supports change in in f voting bill U U. U S S. S Senator Jake Garn R R R- Utah announced last week that he is lending his support to a move to modify the language provisions of the extension of the Voting Yoting Rights nights i Act He lie said the purpose of th thet bill he is joining in sponsoring sponsoring S. S 2321 is to ensure that n nC political subdivision is forced force into the expense and trouble of a bilingual election unless there is is is- is in fact a true single language minority l As the Voting Rights Act now reads bilingual elections are required where the census determines that more than five percent of the citizens of voting age are members of a language minority less than 50 percent of the electorate electora te registered to vote in the last election and where the illiteracy rate of such persons is higher than the national Illiteracy rate Senator Garn explained OH this means that bilingual elections would have to be held in an n Salt SnIt Lake ikc City if five percent of tho the electorate were of Spanish descent and had less than a fifth grade education This in spite of the he fact that the great majority of that five I percent could understand English There are two ill conceived assumptions in the present law First that bt because ause you are a member of an ethnic minority and have less than a fifth grade grado education you cant can't understand English The rhe second is that fewer than 50 percent of voting age citizens voted in the Ja last t election because the majority of them belong to an uneducated ethnic minority Neither e t r is true S S 2321 would define language minority as a minority whose dominant language is other than English |