When Melinda Nickless, a Texas elections official, was asked at a recent training session for county election chairs about Spanish-speaking voters, many attendees were irked by her flippant response.
Days later, she was fired.
Nickless, assistant director of elections for the Texas secretary of state, was asked at the Nov. 7 meeting how poll workers should handle non-English-speaking voters. She first provided an appropriate answer, noting the importance of finding interpreters for precincts in largely minority communities. But in what appeared to be an attempt at a comical aside, Nickless then went on to say, “If you can’t have somebody at the polling location, teach your election judges to say real slow and loud, ‘Sit down. I will call someone to help you.’” She concluded her response, which elicited light laughter, by recounting an anecdote in which her mother, in broken Spanish, attempted to deal with a Hispanic woman who had hit her car in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
McAllen Democrat Rosalie Weisfeld stood to criticize Nickless for her comments. “People who come in, who speak another language, who are American citizens ... they’re registered to vote, and they deserve the right ... to be treated as any other citizen.”
Weisfeld’s objections received applause from the crowd, and Nickless later apologized to those in attendance. News of her firing came four days later.
Nickless’ comments were clearly out of line. Her bungled Spanish — “Un momento, por favor. Mi telefono somebody,” playfully imitating what a poll worker might say — plays especially tone-deaf in a state with millions of Hispanic voters, many of whom have attained a level of English proficiency required to pass citizenship tests but still, understandably, may have trouble comprehending muddled ballot language that voters confront.
But representatives for the agency that fired Nickless have not said directly that her comments prompted her termination. An agency spokesman told the Austin American-Statesman that an internal investigation preceded the firing, which suggests that other job-related issues may have factored into the decision. Even Weisfeld, who rose to reprimand Nickless at the meeting, told the Statesman that while she hopes the termination “[sends] a strong message,” she did not intend to have Nickless fired.
Like Skipper Wallace, a legislative chairman for the Texas Republican County Chairmen’s Association who called the firing a potentially “terrible example of political correctness,” we hope the termination was not simply the result of comments that — while entirely inappropriate — meant no meditated harm. A sincere apology likely would have sufficed.
Yet we hope that officials such as Nickless recognize their roles as arbitrators of an election system that will be required to accommodate non-English-speaking voters, especially as the number of Hispanics on voter rolls increases in coming years.
Government workers operating under a Perry administration would also be wise to shy away from any action that smacks of discrimination, as Republicans have already faced accusations of disenfranchising minorities through voter identification legislation.
Nickless is no longer responsible for overseeing election operations, but we hope those who remain remember that providing access to non-English-speaking voters is not a joke.
19 comments
As are your arguments. You want to remove a citizen's right to vote because of their facility with a non-native language. As such, you represent a chronically incensed minority which insists upon being pandered to. "Pandering to any chronically incensed minority perpetuates the need for further pandering." As such, your very argument constitutes hypocrisy. However, since you are a chronically incensed minority, there is no reason to try reasoning with you to abandon your hypocrisy, so you may have the last word, my chronically incensed friend. No lo tengo mas zu sagen.
Your definition of a so-called "citizen" is specious. The law does not require citizens to speak English or to be functionally literate. In fact, literacy tests are illegal in determining whether a person is competent to vote. Many people who are functionally literate in English do not speak it. The ability to speak is not always tied to the ability to read. The law likewise does not require that members of a jury to speak English or to be functionally literate. Jurors are excused by the judge and selected by the prosecutor and defense attorney. If they select jurors who don't speak English, then there will be jurors who don't speak English.
You don't have to be able to speak a language to be functionally literate in it and neither literacy nor the ability to speak English is a requirement for citizenship in the United States. Next you'll be saying the deaf, the dumb and the blind shouldn't be citizens because they either can't speak English or can't read the printed word. Pandering to any chronically incensed minority, the English-only bigots for example, perpetuates the need for further pandering. So I guess you wish to restrict the pandering to you and your friends.
1911: "English" is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Learn English, for God's Sake.
Your name: Write in complete sentences, with correct punctuation. Learn English, for God's Sake.
Me too: Their comments are grammatically, and structurally, incorrect and DJ's is full of nonsense words. Learn English, for God's Sake.Pandering: They are not so-called citizens, they are citizens of the United States if they are registered to vote.
My name: If you were to move to Mexico, not become a citizen and demand to vote, you would be an imbecile. "Ugly American" is an English expression, so the Mexicans probably wouldn't use it to describe you.Nickless' statements were not limited to Hispanics, although her illustration was. Her advice was counter-productive and demeaning, as are your comments.Legal Eagle: The phrase "to avoid the perception that she was carrying out the Secretary of State's policy or practice to criticize individuals who are linguistically challenged" implies that that is the Secretary of State's policy. I believe the opposite is true.