YORK, Pa. — Latino Justice PRLDEF and Dechert LLP filed a complaint in the federal district court on behalf of CASA against the board of elections in York County for failing to provide Spanish-language materials and assistance to voters as required by the voting rights act.
“The portion of the act that we are filing under is called section 4(e) and as I mentioned, it specifically protects voters who were educated in schools in Puerto Rico, where the predominant language in the classroom is Spanish," said Rayza Goldsmith, associate counsel to Latino Justice PRLDEF.
This comes after several Puerto Rican voters came to CASA to share their voting experiences. Maria del Carmen Gutierrez knows that experience all too well.
“I request someone in Spanish to assist me in the process. They told me that if I do not know English, I cannot vote," said Gutierrez, who works with CASA.
The Latino Civil Rights groups say before filing the lawsuit they tried to resolve the issues with the county with no success. Officials hope that by the midterm elections they are able to provide a smooth voting process to Puerto Rican voters.
“Our community will at least have access to sample ballots in Spanish, so that when they go to the polls, they can understand what’s on the ballot with reference to those reference ballots," said Goldsmith.
The chief operations officer with York County provided FOX43 with a statement saying:
York County has engaged in discussions with CASA and LantinoJustice over the last several months in an effort to understand their concerns about our election process. Yet, we have not been served with or provided a courtesy copy of any court filing and only learned about the possibility of a lawsuit through media inquiries. We have searched the federal court docket and have been unable to find any lawsuit filed against York County. We look forward to defending any claims that might be made in the future and have no ability to comment further about pending litigation, much less litigation about which we have not been notified.