A Guide to Voting for Children of Spanish Speaking Parents
How old were you when your parents first asked you to translate for them on a call to the water or gas service company?
Odds are you were old enough to speak, but likely not yet old enough to understand exactly what was going on. Or maybe you understood perfectly, but this time you were translating between your parents and your teachers so you took artistic liberties with the translation.
Regardless of when or where it happened, many first-generation American children had the privilege and responsibility of helping their immigrant parents navigate this foreign land via mediocre English/Spanish translations.
Now, as adults, some of us have the privilege of helping our parents once again, but now we are guiding them through exercising their highly regarded, but increasingly difficult right to vote. This guide is for anyone helping a Non-English speaking ser querido through the process of finding their personalized ballot and choosing who to vote for in this 2020 Election.
Before we get started, let’s lay out the basics. When you show up to vote on election day, you have to be ready to select your choices for all of the races in your state. This can be anywhere from 10 to 44 races depending on where you live. Also on the ballot, you might find certain measures up for a vote such as propositions or amendments which are changes in the law that will be up to the voters to decide. Please note, however, the process we describe here is not the actual casting of a vote. This is to help your ser querido go through a ballot and print the selections to expedite their experience on election day.
Looking up your ballot beforehand will give you the advantage of being able to research and select your choices before you show up to cast your ballot. An important suggestion is in order. You should also familiarize yourself with the ballot before helping your parents and prior to Election Day. So how do you do that? Easy, keep reading!
Step One: Getting Started
For the purpose of this election, I started with Vote411.org because their website was easy to translate into Spanish. To do this yourself, start at the homepage and find the language pull-down menu at the top of the screen. Click the downward facing arrow next to “English” and select “Espanol” to change the menu completely to Spanish.
Step Two: Finding Your Personal Ballot
Next, let’s find our ser querido’s personal ballot. Click on the Menu button with three horizontal lines and under the “Guías de Votantes” tab, click on the "Información sobre el candidato y la papeleta electoral" link. Once the page loads, click on the “Ingrese su direccion” button and type in your ser querido’s physical address (which should also be the address where they are registered to vote). You will have to select their language again and then click the button titled “Ir a su boleta” to go to the next page.
Step Three: See Your Options
Once the page loads, you should see your ser querido’s ballot options. For my parents, I came up with 12 races that will be on the ballot. This year in Texas, there are no amendments up for vote on their ballot, but I did check in a state that I knew had important amendments on the ballot this year, and I can confirm that these will come up as well on vote411.org.
This is where things get a bit more involved. Fortunately, the ballot is mostly both in English and Spanish. Once you select a specific race, you will see the page expand and first are the duties of the office up for election in English and then Spanish. Next, you will have the option of comparing campaign responses to questions about the candidate’s political platform.
Here we have the beginning of the candidate's profiles side-by-side so we can compare them. The headings were not translated, but most of them are self-explanatory links to their websites, contact information, and social media pages.
Next, you can see the political platform questions and answers. These are translated into Spanish, but apparently not all campaigns submit their answers to Vote411.org. I checked the English language website version to see if there were any English responses and I can confirm that there were no answers from the Trump Campaign.
Unfortunately, this is the case for many of the races on the ballots at Vote411.org and if your ser querido wants to explore specific candidates themselves, I would do a google search for them and go directly to the campaign websites. Many of them have language menus and you can help your ser querido navigate the websites in Spanish so they can learn more about their platforms.
Step Four: Make Your Selections
Once they are ready to make selections on the races for their ballot, all you have to do is check the boxes next to the candidate’s name and Vote411.org will automatically keep loading the next race after each selection until you are all done building their ballot. Once you are done, you will click on the button titled “Finalizar” on the top left of the ballot selections.
Step Five: Print or Email Your Ballot
Once you are all done, just have them decide how they want to receive their ballot. I recommend either printing or emailing it to them so that they can have it readily available for election day!
Voting is both a right and a privilege that we should cherish among all generations of Americans. It is our mission as the Latino Texas PAC to increase representation at all levels of government for the Latino community and to hold all elected officials accountable to the same, regardless of political party affiliation.
We encourage you not only to help your ser querido become more civically engaged, but that if our mission also aligns with your values, you will support our work by following us on social media, signing up to volunteer, and donating to help us expand our mission.