Before choosing a primary ballot at a polling place set up at the Manokotak City Office this week, Mike Toyukak glanced at two sample ballots offering Yup’ik translations of the English ballots available for voters to chose from. From signing for his ballot to depositing it into the ballot box, it only took Toyukak a few minutes to vote. But the scenario he encountered — the Yup’ik language sample ballots, an interpreter on hand had he needed one, and even a Yup’ik glossary of terms available for the poll workers to refer to — were years in the making. And Toyukak was at the heart of the change. His first language was Yup’ik. And for years, when he went to vote he was confronted with an English ballot, and difficulty understanding all the nuances it contained. Although he knows some English, he also knew that others were having an even more difficult time with the language.
So in 2013, the Native American Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against the state on behalf of Toyakuk and others, including the Togiak Traditional Council, asserting that any election information provided in English should also be provided in Yup’ik, Inupiaq and Gwich’in, the language of the Athabascans of Alaska’s Interior. They won the voting rights case, and after a lengthy settlement process, in 2015 the state of Alaska agreed to provide a dozen language assistance provisions for 29 communities at each election through the 2020 general election.
On primary day this year, the language assistance specified in those provisions was available for the first time in more than 100 communities around Alaska, including the 29 identified in the Toyukak settlement, which are in the Dillingham, Kusilvak and Yukon-Koyukuk census areas. The state already provided language assistance in the Bethel region, and translated the official election pamphlet into Spanish and Tagalog, one of the languages of the Philippines.
Full Article: Newly enacted Native language voting provisions rolled out at polls in August Alaska primary – Alaska Dispatch News.