[Lwvcnmtopics] League of Women Voters of Central New Mexico Updates

[kwentworth17 at comcast.net]

George-

 

This is an issue that has been debated in the NM legislature for decades.
When it is discussed, the traditional arguments are that Navajo has been
primarily a spoken rather than written language, and that native speakers
have not read or written in the language, so the value on a ballot would be
dubious. There have been similar arguments for the pueblo languages and the
Apache languages. The NM SOS has tried to deal with this by publishing some
materials about voting in a various languages.

 

The state has never been able to satisfactorily resolve the problem.

 

Karen

From: Lwvcnmtopics <lwvcnmtopics-bounces at mailman.swcp.com> On Behalf Of
George Richmond
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2020 11:23 AM
To: lwvcnmtopics at mailman.swcp.com
Subject: Re: [Lwvcnmtopics] League of Women Voters of Central New Mexico
Updates

 

I read the attachment to Karen's letter which deals with voting procedures.

One issue is that Native Americans may not be proficient in English (or
Spanish) to be able to complete the ballot in either language but could
benefit if the ballot were printed in their language, say, Ute or Dine, for
example.

Yet, for some mysterious reason, ballots in New Mexico are printed in BOTH
ENGLISH AND SPANISH.  

Perhaps that law could be changed to: Printed in English OR Spanish OR Dine
OR.....

I say this is an idea whose time has come.

 

George Richmond

On 6/24/2020 9:06 PM, kwentworth17 at comcast.net
<mailto:kwentworth17 at comcast.net>  wrote:

Hello League members-

 

We hope you are safe and healthy during this long summer. We will have a
unit meeting at noon on July 9 for all members who are willing to join us on
Zoom. We will have a panel of speakers to talk about the decisions made at
the U.S. League of Women Voters virtual convention this week. That will be a
great way to catch up with our national agenda and to start thinking about
where we fit in the national priorities.

 

We also wanted to share a new study of our primary election problems that
has just been released by the UNM School of Social Policy. It looks and what
went wrong during the primary and suggests changes that might be made during
the next legislative session in January. It points out specific problems in
Sandoval County with allowing tribal members to vote and a possible
solution. It also suggests a solution for everyone who didn't get their
absentee ballot back to the Bernalillo County Clerk in time for it to be
counted.

 

League members are active currently on the Voter Guide. We are preparing
questions for the candidate for November and Mary Wilson at t3wilson at aol.com
<mailto:t3wilson at aol.com>  is looking for volunteers to help call candidates
and work on ballot and bond questions and the informational section on how
people can vote in November. This is all work that can be done virtually to
protect those who are still social distancing. We will do an online and
printed version of the Voter Guide for the November election.

 

We hope to see you soon, even if it is only on Zoom. I'll send out the
invitation closer to the meeting.

 

Karen Wentworth

Co-President, LWVCNM  





_______________________________________________
Lwvcnmtopics mailing list
Lwvcnmtopics at mailman.swcp.com <mailto:Lwvcnmtopics at mailman.swcp.com> 
https://mailman.swcp.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lwvcnmtopics

-- 
George M. Richmond
152 Juniper Hill Road, NE
Albuquerque, NM 87122-1913
 
C: 505-280-2105
E: geomrich1 at comcast.net <mailto:geomrich1 at comcast.net> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.swcp.com/pipermail/lwvcnmtopics/attachments/20200625/9f33590a/attachment.htm>