{"id":5574,"date":"2021-11-24T12:26:02","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T16:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=5574"},"modified":"2021-11-24T17:25:13","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T21:25:13","slug":"hamtramck-ramps-up-efforts-to-reach-bangladeshi-voters-during-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/hamtramck-ramps-up-efforts-to-reach-bangladeshi-voters-during-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamtramck Ramps Up Efforts to Reach Bangladeshi Voters During Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nargis Hakim Rahman \u2013 Originally Published by wdet.org<\/p>\n

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. – As voters walk into the Hamtramck Community Center,\u00a0Ali Newaz greets voters and directs them to one of three precincts. He smiles behind his mask. He\u2019s wearing a bright orange sign on his multicolored windbreaker that reads \u201cI speak\u00a0Bangla.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamtramck City Manager Kathy Angerer says the sign is part of an effort to reach out to Bangladeshi voters. Officials are also working to provide more copies of ballots in Bengali or Bangla based on the area\u2019s Bangladeshi population numbers from the 2010\u00a0Census.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of limited English proficient Bengali speaking persons. So, in order to accommodate their voting and make that a process that works better for them we have started having Bengali ballots. A lot of our materials, all of our election materials are translated into Bangla,\u201d says\u00a0Angerer.<\/p>\n

The City of Hamtramck says it\u2019s working to reach its Bangladeshi voters who speak Bengali, also known as Bangla. Officials are trying to provide translated election materials. But community leaders and voters say there is more work to be done even a decade after the city began providing the ballots in accordance with the Voting Rights\u00a0Act.<\/p>\n

Hamtramck has been required to provide them since October 2011 due to the city\u2019s growing Bangladeshi population, now hovering near\u00a030%.<\/p>\n

During the 2010 Census, community leaders encouraged residents to write in \u201cBangladeshi\u201d for ethnicity, instead of \u201cother\u201d on the Census form leading to the change. Angerer says she hopes that\u2019s just the first\u00a0step.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m hoping is that it will broaden and we\u2019ll do that same for Arabic community and other minorities that grow in Hamtramck,\u201d she\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

In June,\u00a0the city of Hamtramck was sued by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund<\/a>\u00a0on behalf of the grassroots community organization Detroit Action and Rahima Begum, a Bangladeshi voter who wasn\u2019t able to cast a Bangla ballot in the 2020\u00a0elections.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/div>\n
COURTESY OF LAURA MISUMI<\/div>\n

Laura Misumi was the Managing Director at Detroit Action earlier this year when the suit was filed. She says community organizers notified the city that Bangladeshi voters were not receiving proper assistance at\u00a0the\u00a0polls.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Laura Misumi was the Managing Director at\u00a0Detroit Action<\/a>\u00a0earlier this year when the suit was filed. She says community organizers notified the city that Bangladeshi voters were not receiving proper assistance at the\u00a0polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe then reached out to\u00a0AALDEF, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, about the possibility of trying to find a language access voting rights lawsuit against the city of Hamtramck for failure to provide this language access,\u201d she\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit states only Republican ballots were available to voters during the presidential primary and Democratic ballots were buried under other materials, there wasn\u2019t signage providing information in Bangla as required by the Voting Rights Act, and poll workers weren\u2019t trained to ask Bangladeshi voters if they\u2019d like to vote in\u00a0Bangla.<\/p>\n

The judge passed a consent decree in July requiring Hamtramck to beef up its efforts<\/a>. Part of the decree requires all election materials to be translated into Bangla, the city has to hire a Bengali election coordinator, and officials have to work with a community advisory\u00a0committee.<\/p>\n

Bilal Hammoud is the Public Engagement Associate with the Michigan Department of State. He is the chair of the state\u2019s language access task\u00a0force.<\/p>\n

He says he does outreach work to reach communities \u201cthat traditionally face more than the average barriers to access,\u201d like connecting people to state resources for voting, housing\u00a0and\u00a0jobs.<\/p>\n

Hammoud says while some people have barriers such as not having official IDs to vote non-English speakers, immigrants\u00a0and refugees may need information in their native languages to effectively cast a\u00a0ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so in communities like Dearborn\u00a0and Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, we have to put an extra effort to ensure that these communities are getting that representation and the equitable access,\u201d he\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

Abu Musa is a former Hamtramck City Councilman who served two terms in Hamtramck. He lost a bid for reelection this year. He says he voted in\u00a0Bangla.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can vote in English also. When people encourage you to [use]\u00a0Bengali ballots, as a Bangladeshi American it is my pride to vote with the Bengali ballot,\u201d he\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

Musa, who reads and writes fluently in Bangla, says in previous years there were errors on the ballots because they were poorly\u00a0translated.<\/p>\n

Hamtramck says fewer than 10 people voted in Bangla in the general election this month. That compares to just two people requesting ballots in Bangla between 2012 and 2020, according to the City Clerk\u2019s\u00a0office.<\/p>\n

Musa says it\u2019s important for people to have these ballots because members of the Bangladeshi community have had to fight for\u00a0representation.<\/p>\n

As people left the polling place earlier this month, many residents said they didn\u2019t vote in Bangla.\u00a0Some said they didn\u2019t know they could request the special ballots, but they did notice the translators wearing bright orange signs who were there to\u00a0help.<\/p>\n

Community organizers say they are working with Hamtramck officials to take steps to do better \u2014 one election at a time.\u00a0\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nargis Hakim Rahman \u2013 Originally Published by wdet.org HAMTRAMCK, Mich. – As voters walk into the Hamtramck Community Center,\u00a0Ali Newaz greets voters and directs them to one of three precincts. He smiles behind his mask. He\u2019s wearing a bright orange sign on his multicolored windbreaker that reads \u201cI speak\u00a0Bangla.\u201d Hamtramck City Manager Kathy Angerer […]","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5574"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5580,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574\/revisions\/5580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}