100 signatures reached
To: NYC Board of Elections, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
NYC: Let Immigrants Vote Absentee!
WHAT:
Translate the online absentee ballot application (https://www.nycabsentee.com/) into, at a minimum, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Bangla.
WHEN:
ASAP. Primary elections are June 23, and absentee ballot applications must be postmarked by June 16.
Why is this important?
As COVID-19 forces NYC's immigrant communities to grapple with death and economic devastation, they may now also face widespread disenfranchisement at the exact moment their voices need to be amplified.
In advance of primary elections, the NYC Board of Elections created an online application for absentee ballots on May 5, but failed to provide it in any language other than English. As a result, hundreds of thousands of immigrant voters, afraid to visit polls and unable to vote by mail, could be shut out of primary elections. According to the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, more than half of the 1.6 million immigrants living in New York City are citizens, and 853,000 people residing in the city speak languages other than English.
NYC Board of Election may also be violating Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which requires the Board to translate all materials into certain minority languages. See:
https://www.justice.gov/crt/language-minority-citizens
Tell the Board of Elections and our elected leaders to PROTECT immigrants' voting rights!