Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Supports Bilingual Ballots

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said on Tuesday that she supports the Department of Justice in its efforts to get a bilingual ballot in Cuyahoga County.
Brunner said the DOJ contacted county officials in July, telling them they would need to have ballots in English and Spanish,
The order came after studies showed the county was home to more than 6,300 Puerto Rican voters with limited English proficiency.
Brunner said the Voting Rights Act has special exceptions for certain groups of U.S. citizens.

“The act recognizes that there are groups of Americans who are educated in languages other than English, such as Native Americans or Eskimos or Puerto Ricans and, under that act, if there’s difficulty understanding English then they’re to be accommodated under federal law,” Brunner said on Tuesday.
“What’s difficult for people to understand is that the federal law recognizes that Puerto Rico, even though the schools are American schools, the children there are taught in Spanish,” Brunner said. “So the law recognizes if they were educated in Spanish and they move to the mainland, if the have limited English proficiency, we need to accommodate them.”
Brunner said there is no specific number of voters a county must have in order to require a bilingual ballot, Hirsch reported.more

Butler County, Sheriff Jones To Spearhead AZ Type Bill In Ohio

Sheriff Richard K. Jones announced Thursday, April 29, he will spearhead efforts to have a statewide “citizens initiative” placed on the ballot for Ohio immigration reform.
Fearing recent letters he sent jointly with state Rep. Courtney Combs, R-Hamilton, to Ohio leaders won’t be enough to get immigration reform on the “fast track” for Ohio, Jones said he wants the voters to decide the issue in November.
“Our federal government has let us down on immigration reform,” Jones said in a prepared statement. “I’m afraid our state legislature may not want to act on it either … If the majority of voters in Ohio want it done, it’s probably going to have to be their initiative to be the driving force.”
“If the governor doesn’t want to stand up to illegal immigrants and the drug trafficking coming out of Mexico, then we’ll take it to the people,” Combs said.
The issue concerns many of Butler County’s estimated 363,184 Hispanics. That number is up 9.2 percent since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.More

Sheriff Richard K Jones and Rep. Combs may be written to:
Sheriff R K Jones
705 Hanover Street
Hamilton OH 4 5 0 1 1

Courtney Eric Combs,
State Representative (R) of the 54 District
77 S. High St
10th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111

'You do not have to be a citizen of Ohio or Butler County to do this.
Praise and thank your friends, while ignoring your enemies and no “Keystone Cops” alphabet-soup federal agency will visit you.
Keep it short and simple. You do not have to be Shakespeare or Hemmingway. Misspellings are okay. Mispellings show the letter comes from real people.' a244