Tmac im glad you are here so we can get started. Since your last panel, we know you are going to bring it so we can wrap this up and close up strong. That may introduce our panelists. We have john yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans advancing justice. Mr. Yang leads the organization his to fight Asian Americans to create just america for all through Public Policy advocacy education litigation. His extensive legal background enables advancing justice to address the study all season programs legislative attempts to discriminate against and marginalize Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other minority communities. Mr. Vargas is the chief executive officer latino and elected officials. A nation a Membership Organization of latina policymakers and their supporters, governed by a 35 member board of directors. This vargas also serves is ceo and educational, and affiliated National Nonprofit organization strengthens american democracy by promoting full participation of latinos in pacific life. Mr. Son. Is the president and general counsel of the Mexican AmericanLegal Defense fund Legal Defense and educational fund. A lease the rights organizations offices in pursuing litigation and policy advocacy and community ed education to promote civil rights latinos leaving in the United States. Mr. Son has rejoined modicon august of 2009 after spending four years of counsel to the mayor of los angeles. Mr. Stein has previously spent 12 years at on a practicing civil rights law. What was her. Not least Michelle Bishop, she is the disability advocacy specialist for Voting Rights of the National Disability rights network. She is responsible for coordinating Voting Rights to initiatives in every u. S. State district and territory, as well is providing training and technical as well as providing training and Technical Assistance to mdr nationwide network regarding Voting Rights and access for voters with disabilities under thevo help of america vote act. Ms. Bishop also works in coalition with the Civil Rights Community in washington, d. C. To ensure strong federal policy regarding votingin rights and Election Administration. I thank you all for being here. As you know the lighting system issues, when to begin speaking the green light will come on, you will have five minutes. At one minute remaining you will see the yellow light come on and thenen youll see the red light which will indicate you need to try to wrap up your testimony. Mr. Yang, you are recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much, chair fudge. Let me first start offering my condolences for the loss of representative cummings. Mr. Cummings was a champion for so many of our issues and his loss is going to be a loss not just for this congress but for the entire nation. Really l appreciate having, inviting us to testify hitter on Language Access and importance of this to Asian Americans in particular. While the Voting Rights act of 1865 has been, it helps to ensure Language Access and assistance to Asian Americans. It is only one piece of the puzzle that we need to look at when making sure that asians americans are represented. Its important to start off by recognizing the Asian American community. The Asian American community is the Fastest Growing community and the United States. Between the 2000 the signal census and 2010 the sanyo census the Asian American community has grown by 46 . Today we represent about 22. 6 million in the United States which is a little over 6 of the american population. E also increased dramatically numbers over the years. Doing the 2012 election in 2016 election, then increase by over 1 million voters. It is also important to know that Asian Americans are not monolithic. Certainly there are numerous Asian Americans in urban centers throughout the country. Our Fastest Growing populations are in nevada and arizona in North Carolina and georgia. So the needs of Asian Americans often times are very diverse. With prospective Language Access, we represent over a hundred different languages from 60 different asian human cities. Ensuring that that Asian Americans have information in the language that they understand best is always a challenge. And i personally language minority voters, are often denied much of the need it federally required assistance at the public loophole and faced numerous barriers at the polls. First, problems can arise when all workers do not fully understand the Voting Rights laws. Poll workers often times unfortunately been hostile to their own backgrounds or have language issues. We do look at things the asianAmerican Voters voters have, they are challenged with respect to their identification. Both of they are a citizen or both of they belong in the polls. I will be relatively brief. I just offer some recommendations with some respect with what can be done with the language assistance. With respect to language assistance, what i think we can do is to make sure to translate materials are available. Effective in conducting a comprehensive review election materials to make sure that they really had to fight materials to go to the need it communities. W certified translators and the use certified translation members to make sure the translations are Community Oriented and using communitybased organization as well. To assure that they speak in language not only legal language that is appropriate in a communitybased language and culture that is appropriate. With respect to the actual pulse, taking protections that are necessary, one of the things also is making sure that you have assistance on section 28 of the voters right act to ensure that people are allowed their choice. Now Election Officials should provide bilingual all workers with separate training. In a language assistance. So what should be done in their wishes but regardless both of the jurisdictions are covered, every poll worker should be trained to understand the needs of the language minority butter. Have a poll worker can best assess that voter. And having 80 roleplaying exercise to ensure englishspeaking workers as well is the language coworkers can provide assistance and the per the know how to handle situations and other rights. In the Election Assistance Commission can provide a role in that. Providing perhaps an educational infrastructure that would allow for best practices. To provide some of these exercises that i described. Certainly jurisdictions have also on a military base is provided languages this is provides translated materials. We seen that in Fairfax County even though technically it was hard covered by section two oh three, they decided to offer language assistance to both korean speaking population that fell short of it as well is providing it to vietnamese population. These are things can get on a basis but certainly are very effective for our communities. It is a fast growing community. Community that is going to be transitioning to u. S. Born Asian Americans in a relatively short matter of time. It would also translate into more voters and people that want to be engaged in electoral process. I would ask this committee to consider all the different ways in which that language assistance can be provided. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your recognize repugnance. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and we join in the morning and passing of representative cummings. Disorganization recognizes that in despite the guarantees that all of the americas was at the same rights. Our nation has not yet been the goal of democracy. In the past the present policies have been adopted that disenfranchised and are represented voters. [inaudible conversation] fully important grantor of latino voters equal access to the ballot. Substantial number of latinos eligible to vote, are not yet fully fluent in english and their ability to cast an informed successful vote. In a heap is on their access to understandable materials and to persons providing assistance with him they can communicate. According to 2018 acs, when your data, nearly 22 million citizens speak spanish and approximately 6. 3 million of them are not fluent in english. Markets are not yet fluent in english register and vote in lower rates because of the legacy of monday decades of intentional efforts to exclude voters on the basis of their proceeding of National Origin is ongoing negligence and searing administering language assistance, and inattention to discouraging if facts of some Election Administration procedures. Off of millions of potential latino voters enjoy the presumed access to multi lingual information or materials, monday are still indisputably underserved. Just during the 2018 election cycle, reports to the Election Protection coalition hotline, including our frontline which received calls from voters in english and spanish including incidences of spanishspeaking voters in jurisdictions with large speaking populations including in southern californ california, that they were not able to request or to spanishlanguage ballots and significant number of our colors had unmet need for language assistance and live in location in warren county, new jersey, and virginia. Monday jurisdictions have implemented methods of identifying potentially ineligible voters among those registered which disproportionately inhibit language minority voters participations in elections for example, since 2010 a number of states have compared Voter Registration list to information in those states and federal databases that are not designed or useful for voting purposes. And they have erroneously singled out voters were mostly naturalized citizens for purging our demands for documentations. The nation polling place closures, and read alignment also threatens language minority voters participation. To accommodate these trends, members of congress should mandate the use of inclusive administrative practices in federal elections and a sense of eyes, Election Administrators to take proactive steps to better surf language minority voters. Best practices to ensure election accessibility for which congress could provide financial support, include regular consultation with Community Institutions and leaders to represent language minority communities and i will add this is been a very Effective Practice in the past for those of us supervised naturalization assistant services. These have a very Healthy Partnership with the usda is. And i troubleshoot with them. On how to better meet the needs of legal permanent residents applying for u. S. Citizenship. The same concept could be applied to working with local leaders and identify best practices for making voting is accessible to all. There should be regular training for all employees and measures accessibility and adaptation of administration argument, for and avoid the negative impact on my wish minority voters. In the country billing influence on an ministration that is monday applying to reduce or neglect Language Accessibility mandates. Organizational congressional advocates accessibility, you must be prepared to defend basic necessity and utility to providing linkages for elections. Is number americans of diverse National Origins the linguistic grow, and effectiveness in engaging those citizens is active voters will increasingly determine the health of our democracy and the credibility of our government is the product of a truly representative political process. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you man chair and members of the subcommittee. Is president and general counsel i laid seven lawyers across the country regular confronting barriers to access for latino voters in this various both occur at the point based and instructors including election structures to prevent the latino vote from having the effect it would have. But today i want to focus on in the me new challenge to the Latino Community seems to target naturalized citizen voters pretty girls out of this administration his campaign. That puts quantico americans first, or quote unquote citizens first, that framework seems to lead up naturalized citizens. We first saw this in the attempt to and Citizenship Question to sit since 2020 and in doing so the headmistress was clearly seeking to trigger a map of vendor can out of the Latino Community in the first effect of that massive undercount would be on Voting Rights. It would result in an underrepresentation of the Latino Community both in reapportionment and redistributing the seats in the house of representatives among the states and with any state, and reduce training congressional seats as well is state legislative and local. As well. Is we know, this report and an improbable victory prevented for Citizenship Question from going on this is the story type. The Campaign Continues to impact and prevent naturalized latino voters from participating. One example of this is in the executive order that accompanied the decision by the administration to give up attempting to read a Citizenship Question in 2020. That in that executive order the president ordered the Commerce Department to seek administrative record from both federal and state sources to try to put together a database of citizenship around the country. They now learn in recent media reports that one of the main mechanisms they will use to attempt to identify citizens, is dmv records from karen. The problem is, is we recently saw indicates litigated by moldovan others in texas, is the dmv databases with respect to citizenships are notoriously inaccurate. The fact is that someone who goes to dmv before becoming simpson has no obligation or a mini reason to report back to the dmv once and naturalized to become a citizen. They would not have any location you back to the mb until they need to renew drivers license for example. We saw this in texas where texas attempted to purge voters from the hot earls county by county by directing registrars to use faulty dmv data. To send notices to those who were not citizens when they went to the dmv and tell them that they were effectively being accused of being ineligible voters. Fortunately the litigation prevented that from going forward. But we now see that the administration is using the same faulty databases to created the database of citizens with the intent of that then be used, or state or locality might choose to test the constitutional limits of one person and one vote. And might choose to equalize population among districts based on something other than total population. Clearly that use of faulty citizenship data when a tremendous impact on the Voting Rights latinos. And raises monday concerns. Upcoming those concerns are the ongoing rhetoric comes from this administration that seems to target every latino and immigrant in the country regardless if they have naturalized or not. We are concerned that this ongoing rhetoric including the invasions of privacy and he is staying accessing these inaccurate dmv records could result in for the Voting Rights challenges. We are concerned that it could result in the unwarranted challenges to someones eligibility to vote by vigilantes who lets look at that rhetoric in this administration from the white house and beyond, and he said they are going to challenge particular voters namely latino voters are voters who dont speak english voters who up here to them to me donald trump his definition of who its not american. We see this looming threat to voting prices potentially having applications is early is next year. And we are concerned that its a short step from the rhetoric that we hear today to rhetoric the challenges the legal requirement of providing language assistance, bilingual assistance materials and languages and languages other than language and english to voters. We are concerned that is early is next year his election, we will see inappropriate challenges and providing those requirement materials and we will see challenges to the judgment seat and eligibility naturalized but do not yet speak english and these are access barriers that are new. And they are created entirely by the campaign that we see on a daily basis from the trumpet ministration. Rees