S.L. County now required to offer Spanish language assistance to voters

SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake County's changing demographics means county election officials will be required to offer Spanish language assistance to voters starting with the 2012 primary election.

Salt Lake County is one of 248 jurisdictions nationwide that must provide language assistance during elections for groups that are unable to speak or understand English well enough to participate in the electoral process.

The Census Bureau also determined that San Juan County must provide Navajo language assistance to voters there.

These jurisdictions, identified through census counts and estimates, are required to provide translation of written materials, bilingual staff at polling places, community outreach and promotion of the availability of language assistance. The determinations are based on five-year data compiled from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The Voting Rights Act, amended in 2006, mandates that a state or political subdivision must provide language assistance to voters "if more than 5 percent of voting age citizens are members of a single-language minority group and do not speak or understand English adequately enough to participate in the electoral process and if the rate of those citizens who have not completed the fifth grade is higher than the national rate of voting age citizens who have not completed the fifth grade."

Pam Perlich, senior research economist in the University of Utah's Bureau of Economic & Business Research, said the designation validates "we're really at the crossroads of a new era in Utah."

The demographics of Salt Lake County's school-age children, for instance, reflect a significant shift in the county's minority population, she said. According to the 2010 Census, minorities under age 18 make up 33.9 percent of the county's population while minorities 18 and older make up 22.8 percent.

Countywide, Hispanics or Latinos make up 17 percent of the county's population. 

As the state's population center, the Wasatch Front attracts many immigrants seeking economic opportunity. Others are refugees who have been resettled here. The area's universities and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' worldwide missionary efforts are other draws.

"All of those things combined result in people seeing Utah as a welcoming place, as a place of opportunity — bright opportunity. That has brought many new people to our community," Perlich said.