Malden Makes Language Access a Priority at the Polls
By Martha Bezzat To serve Malden’s growing number of non-native English speakers, the city administration is implementing new technology that will impact voting and language access for voters this November for the midterm state and federal elections. A new campaign called “I Speak” was initiated during the Sept. 6 primary election and was an opportunity to do a trial run of new Pocketalk devices that support voters speaking other language backgrounds to access, read, and understand the ballots. Poll workers were trained prior to the election and were specifically trained to recognize when voters may be having difficulty with language accessibility and to practice cultural sensitivity. The process works like this: 1) voters can point to a picture on language recognition cards to indicate what language they speak, 2) then a poll worker plugs that language into the Pocketalk device, which contains 72 languages, and 3) then they will be able to have a conversation with the poll worker, in English with translation back and forth, about their needs or questions. Susan Ecker, a Malden resident and […]