The State of the State for Washington Latinos

Going to Olympia to discuss policy with state legislators becomes a tricky task when said legislators are dealing with an $8 billion shortfall in the state’s budget. Everyone is hyperaware of the potential budgetary implications of the issues you bring up, and quick to point them out. This made for a somewhat challenging environment for our group of students to pitch their policy recommendations. On the other hand, the budgetary focus of our reception illuminated an important aspect to my research that I had not previously considered.

My colleague Pedro Galvao mentioned in a recent post the importance of following laws with more adequate enforcement. What this trip emphasized for me is the importance of following laws with proper funding.

Along with classmates Nick Dollar and Pedro Galvao, I researched Latino voting rights in city council elections in Pasco, Washington. Our research was designed in part to look for violations of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA). Among other provisions, the VRA protects minority voting rights by requiring certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual elections materials and voter outreach.

My research found that the implementation of bilingual programs and election ballots in Pasco doubled Latino voter turnout in the first two years after they were introduced. This is an important achievement in a town where Latinos comprise 56% of the population, yet comprise only 5% of voters in local elections and have no representation on the city council.

The situation is very similar in other towns in eastern Washington, indicating a widespread need for bilingual election outreach. The VRA responds to this need in its regulations, but the law was passed with no budgetary allocation to help states and counties actually pay for bilingual programs. A staff member of the Washington Legislature’s Committee on State Government & Tribal Affairs who we spoke with about our research aptly called the bilingual requirements of the VRA an “un-funded mandate.” That is, the federal government has required action on bilingual election materials by local government but provided no source of funding. Practically this makes these programs dead in the water for local and state governments facing tight budgets.

This revelation comes as no shock, since difficulties in translating policy from the national to local levels is an all-to-common feature of federalism. However, this comment did reinforce in my mind the need for Washington State to consider drafting its own voting rights act, something already accomplished in California. The budget shortfall likely prevents such action for the moment, but drafting a state voting rights act might not only help to provide more funds for bilingual programs, it could also reinstate the important judicial recourses to voting rights violations that have been progressively eroded in the federal Act by a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.