Feb. 25--Voters casting ballots in Chicago on Tuesday likely walked out with a slip of paper translated from English into three languages -- one of which may not have looked familiar.
For decades, Spanish has been a staple on the ballot receipts thanking voters for coming out. In the early 2000s, Chinese began showing up.
But the newest addition, Hindi, was added only in 2012. The language also appeared on some ballots and precinct signs.
Including Hindi on voting materials stemmed from recent U.S. Census Bureau numbers and Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires officials to provide language assistance to minority groups that need it.
Asian-Indians in Cook County are the latest group to qualify both in population and need. Illinois was the first state required by the U.S. Justice Department to offer ballots printed in Hindi.
"It goes by jurisdiction," said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. "When DuPage and Lake counties were adding Spanish for the first time, we were adding Hindi."
In suburban Cook County, where races were much more limited Tuesday, only seven precincts in Morton Grove received language assistance in Hindi, said a spokesman for the Cook County clerk's office. For other elections, that number would climb to 77.
There are about 200,000 Asian-Indians in Illinois, said Tuyet Le, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Chicago. And though the number of voters in other minority groups, such as Polish-American and Arab-American, are significant, they may not be considered racial minorities by the U.S. Census Bureau, she said.
A challenge arose when it came to narrowing the language for the growing South Asian population. Unlike minority groups that have one official language, Asian-Indians speak numerous languages. So while the federal mandate was clear, settling on Hindi -- as opposed to Urdu or Gujarati, for example -- was the result of many meetings and much community outreach.
It's too early to tell if the effort has translated to increased voter turnout in the Asian-Indian community, said Andrew Kang, of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Chicago, but the response has been positive.
"Seeing a language they recognize on official documents can be really exciting," Kang said. "It's about making voters feel more comfortable with every step of the voting process."
deldeib@tribpub.com
