Here in Arizona, voting signs are in two, and only two, languages. (This despite the fact that, while Spanish is of course very widespread here, Phoenix metro has a such a significant diversity that mainstream movie houses routinely show both American blockbusters and import films films in Hindi and Tagalog and others.)
Anyway, since I am never anywhere but Arizona on voting day, I wondered, are voting signs in Spanish and English everywhere? Is Spanish the de facto second language for voting signs? Or is it only in English where you are?
Actually in my town, the ‘vote here’ signs include Spanish. I have no clue what the electronic ballot looks like. I don’t recall an option to select language.
I verified, you can request a Spanish Mail Ballot. So decent chance can be selected in the booth also.
While in the cities around here you’ll see Spanish, Haitian, Portuguese, and a few others. Up north you often see French because of the Quebec influence.
My local polling place is in a school. No signs until you get to the door. No real way to know it’s a poling location unless you look at your sample ballot or look it up online. I don’t remember Spanish signs anywhere but I wasn’t looking. Although the state is very diverse my county is not. There is Spanish on the ballot drop boxes.
This thread gave me an excuse to get out and walk around the neighborhood,
passing by a ballot drop box at the local community center. One side of
the box had a sign with nine languages - English, Spanish, Russian, Korean,
Chinese or Japanese (sorry I can’t tell the difference), Cambodian (Khmer), plus
three others that I could not identify.
Just in case you think this is a new phenomenon in the US, I can remember outdoor signs in Spanish & English in the 1950’s in North-EasternWisconsin, like baño público. Although Spanish wasn’t much spoken in Wisconsin year-round, for a few weeks in the summer, it was the dominant language locally, since trucks of migrant workers were brought up from Mexico to pick the crops (cherries, apples, others). Their entire (large) families came along, which meant more farmhands per paycheck, and more sales by grocery stores.
The locals were happy with the arrangement IMHO, since they desperately need the labor help for the farms and orchards, and everyone was friendly as long as the migrants were only here temporarily.
In Canada most voting signs are in English and French. However, you sometimes see more languages in places like Toronto, and other things like voting pamphlets tend to come in many different languages.
(Canadians pride themselves on their knowledge of exotic food and mastery of the French found on cereal boxes. Toronto in particular is a “city of immigrants” and huge percentages speak other languages at home - often Chinese or South Asian languages, Italian, etc.)
I don’t vote in person so I couldn’t know what they say, possibly just English and Spanish.
Hospital consent forms are in multiple languages, including the usual suspects such as many above, and also Amharic. Wells Fargo has a lot of presence in Minneapolis, so sometimes I’ve seen Hmong as an option on those ATMs.
