This book focuses on obtaining more detailed information about bilingual voting assistance from selected jurisdictions across the country. The book's objectives were to determine: the ways that selected jurisdictions covered under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act have provided bilingual voting assistance as of the November 2006 general election and any subsequent elections through June 2007, and the challenges they reportedly faced in providing such assistance; the perceived usefulness of this bilingual voting assistance, and the extent to which the selected jurisdictions evaluated the usefulness of such assistance to language minority voters. This is an excerpted and indexed edition.

Testimony concerning amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addresses, specifically, the provisions for language assistance for Alaskan native, Asian-American, Hispanic, and Native American citizens in order that they be able to exercise effectively their right to vote. The proposed legislation would extend coverage of Section 203 of the amendments for an additional 15 years. Testimony includes the transcribed and written statements, and supporting documentation, of: legislators (Solomon P. Ortiz, Jose E. Serrano, Patsy T. Mink, Bill Emerson, Henry J. Hyde) and scholars, attorneys, and representatives of voting rights, language, and educational organizations (John A. Garcia, Jeannette Wolfley, Kevin J. Lanigan, P. George Tryfiates, Faith Roessel, Margaret Fung, Josephine J. Wang, Philip Riggin, Andrew Hernandez, Yvonne Y. Lee, Luis C. Caban, Vanessa Dixon, Eugene W. Hickok, Jr., John R. Dunne, M. Faith Burton, Frank R. Parker, Abigail Thernstrom, Theodore M. Shaw, Joaquin G. Avila, and Timothy G. O'Rourke). Supporting materials submitted for the hearings are appended. (MSE)