For Richmond’s Laotian and Mien population, language presents a barrier to voting

Seuy Karnsouvong remembers going to the fire station by Crescent Park in Richmond with her late husband, Boonthong, to vote. Since she wasn’t familiar with English like he was, he would walk her through filling out her ballot.

That was decades ago, but Karnsouvong still needs help dissecting the complicated language used in measures and other parts of the ballot. She isn’t alone in needing assistance with voting. 

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Richmond has 1,667 Laotian and 182 Mien residents. Many of these residents struggle with the complex language in their Lao-translated ballots, which prevents them from fully engaging in elections, said Sandy Saeteurn, local political coordinator at Asian Pacific Environmental Network. Some face additional barriers because they speak minority Laotian dialects such as Mien and Khmu, and others do not read or write in their own language.

Karnsouvong and her late husband were some of the first from their community to join APEN after the 1999 Chevron explosion. The environmental justice organization was actively engaging the Laotian community at the time.

APEN has built a system of civic education and translation for monolingual Laotian, Mien, and Khmu communities in Richmond. 

During an election year, APEN and other organizations work with immigrant and refugee communities by conducting ballot meetings with their members. This involves voter education and discussions around civic engagement that are translated spontaneously into Lao, Mien and Khmu.

“We need to have interpreters who can really talk it through in detail with the members,” said Megan Zapanta, APEN’s Richmond organizing director.

California’s Elections Code does provide a Lao-translated ballot guide to help those who read and write in that language. However, another group of voters is still being overlooked, Saeteurn said.  Laotian, Mien and Khmu voters who do not read or write. 

“I don’t think that as a system or society as a whole that we have been really targeting how to create more accessibility for monolingual folks who don’t read or write,” she said. 

For those they can’t reach in person, APEN finds creative ways to educate by creating explanatory videos in their languages.

“They can’t understand in terms of reading and writing, but if we create it in language videos and they watch it, they can hear it and see it and they can understand it,” Saeteurn said.

Both the federal Voting Rights Act and the California Elections Code use census data collected every five years to determine which language minority groups receive translated election materials and ballot guides. 

The Voting Rights Act mandates translation if a single language group in a jurisdiction is more than 5% of all voting-age citizens and has an illiteracy rate above the national average. Yet these policies overlook many people like Karnsouvong who rely on spoken translation.

California’s Elections Code requires counties to provide translated ballot guides when at least 3% of voting-age residents in an area speak a minority language and need help voting in English. 

For Contra Costa County, translated ballots are available for Chinese, Taiwanese and Hispanic populations. The translated ballot guides required by the California Elections Code are Filipino, Hindi, Korean, Laotian, Nepali, Panjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Vietnamese. 

As APEN’s Laotian and Khmu interpreter, Manh Phongboupha knows the challenges well. He reviews small phrases repeatedly to understand what he’s translating and to ensure he can simplify it for monolingual voters, he said.

“From being able to read, being able to get there to vote in person or drop it off, there’s just a lot of obstacles that our community has to deal with,” Saeteurn said.

Richmond voters consider conflicting ballot measures that would change how local leaders are elected.