George Will, from time to time, makes sense.
His latest piece, on the other hand, is poorly argued crap of the first order.
In this recent bout of fallacy, Will rails against the idea of a bilingual ballot. The first and most obvious problem is that he conflates voting rights with immigration law, and those are two very distinct subjects, mostly because if you're voting, you're already a citizen and the immigration aspect is accordingly moot. (Slower for Mr. Will: "If...you...can...vote...you...are...already...a...citizen;" repeat that to yourself) Believe it or not, George, there are citizens that speak Spanish better than they speak English. Some of them are native-born, too. It happens.
But even when someone manages to become a citizen with only mild proficiency in English, the idea that the public is better served by them not being able to read what they're voting on (for instance, any number of constitutional amendments or citizen-led initiatives) is laughable, and the notion that it's acceptable to make it harder for any citizen to vote is anti-democratic to the Nth power.
But Mr. Will is not done! No, he wants to make a greater argument about the need for an informed electorate, one that is aware of the political debate, or the "civic conversation," as Will alliteratively puts it.
But what public good is advanced by encouraging the participation of people who, by saying they require bilingual assistance, are saying they cannot understand the nation's political conversation? By receiving such assistance, they are receiving a disincentive to become proficient in English.
...
Declaring English the national language is a mere gesture. But by ending bilingual ballots, American law would perform its expressive function of buttressing, by codifying and vivifying, certain national assumptions and aspirations. Among those is this: The idea of citizenship becomes absurd when sundered from the ability to understand the nation's civic conversation.
What makes Americans generally welcoming of immigrants, and what makes immigrants generally assimilable, is that this is a creedal nation, one dedicated to certain propositions, not one whose origins and identity are bound up with ethnicity. But if you are to be welcomed to the enjoyment of American liberty, then America has a few expectations of you. One is that you can read the nation's founding documents and laws, and can comprehend the political discourse that precedes the casting of ballots.
Okay, let's count the ways this is stupid:
1.) There is no requirement that a voter be able to "comprehend the political discourse." The last time we had those requirements they took the form of literacy tests, and the very law that Will advocates removing part of, the Voting Rights Act, made it illegal to have those laws since they're blatantly discriminatory.
2.) Unless he's got a plan to ensure that every voter is up-to-date with current events and has a reasonably strong background in constitutional law, there will never be an electorate of the manner he envisions. And if he thinks that restricting the vote to only those citizens that are strong English speakers is going to produce a more informed electorate, I have five words for him: "Britney Spears, Voter, speaks English"
3.) Did George miss those very, very large demonstrations less than two months ago? Perhaps he couldn't hear the chants of "si, se puede!" from up in his office. So here's a copy of the story his own paper ran about the demonstrations, which were held in response to a piece of federal legislation, indicating a clear understanding of, and participation in, the "civic conversation" among the Spanish-speaking community. It's idiotic to an extreme level to think, after recent events, that only English-speakers are participating in the national political debate.
4.) How out-of-touch must a person be to think that there is no news in Spanish available in the US? Every major city has at least one Spanish-language paper (Atlanta has at least three major Spanish-language weeklies, Tampa Bay has two that I can think of off hand). Spanish-language radio stations are everywhere, and, believe it or not, don't exclusively play salsa music and mariachi records--sometimes, they actually do discuss current events. Ever heard of Telemundo? How about Univision? Both networks frequently broadcast political speeches with real-time translations. CNN has CNN Espanol. Even the White House has a Spanish-language page, as many of us noted during the "English as a national language" debate. It's not like a Spanish speaker cannot stay informed if they so choose.
Will's argument is therefore predicated on a false notion: you need not speak English to be engaged in the national debate. Ergo, his primary argument against the bilingual ballot is crap.
Not only that, but it's not like assisting English-illiterate voters is a new or novel concept, however earnestly Will likes to think it is. Colorado first mandated interpreters for non-English speaking voters in 1891. Arkansas that same year made provisions for elections officials to assist those that couldn't read the ballot. Illinois also in 1891 provided that any voter that swore under oath that they "cannot read the English language shall be assisted in marking his ballot." Kentucky's 1890-91 Constitution provided for "persons illiterate" to have assistance in voting. Georgia mandates English literacy in 1907, but exempted those "persons who are of good character, and understand the duties and obligations of citizenship," (and those that owned at least 40 acres of land worth more than $500--because having valuable land is of course an indicator of character and understanding). Louisiana required literacy in 1921, but didn't care what language it was you could read or write. Missouri had an English literacy requirement until they repealed it--way back in 1875. And just about every state that required English literacy in voters still exempted those voters that were already on the rolls from the new restrictions. George Will seems to be arguing that the model to follow for requiring English comprehension by voters already on the rolls is that of Mississippi (1890), Georgia (1907), and Alabama (1901). Of course, we all remember how well those states did at protecting the integrity of the ballot and maintaining an informed electorate after those laws were passed, don't we? And certainly the mass disenfranchisement of one particular voting bloc had nothing, nothing to do with those laws, right?
George Will hit a grand slam last week with his piece on the absurdity of labeling a constituency as "values voters." That piece illustrated well that the common goal of all voters is to advance their values through the ballot. So what is Will trying to say with this recent piece--that the values of those voters who speak Spanish are by that fact alone different than "American" values?
Que idiota.
(And a special note of thanks to Dr. Alexander Keyssar's work The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, from which the state-level information cited above comes)