The Department of Justice has announced that it is monitoring elections in Arizona today regarding the Navajo and Apache languages.  The release notes this is federal observer coverage (OPM).  That means that teams of federal observers under the control of OPM (not DOJ) will be sent into these areas to record events surrounding the elections.  DOJ attorneys will manage and review observer reports prior to being finalized.

This raises an interesting issue regarding Indian languages under Section 203.  I recently heard Sara Frankenstein note that many Indian languages are trending toward obsolescence.  That is, only the oldest of the native speakers use the language at all, and most of them already understand English.  She noted an interesting event.  At one recent election in South Dakota, there was an election for tribal issues as well as a state election.  There were separate tables for each election.  Tribal voters who went to vote in the tribal election had one choice in the election run by the tribe – a ballot in English.  The tribal election was not conducted in the tribal language.  Right next to the tribal election table, the same voters could vote in the state election, where, under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, ballots had to be offered in the tribal language as a matter of federal law.  Again, in the tribal election, no ballots were offered in the tribal language, but in the state/federal election in the same location, federal law required tribal language ballots.

There seem to be two issues here.  First, how long should Section 203 mandate use of a dying Indian language?  A subset of this question is: what are the appropriate levels of federal resource allocation to monitor or litigate matters involving languages approaching obsolescence?  Second, could the resource issue be informed by looking at how much of a priority the tribe itself places on having ballots in a tribal language?  At least in the case discussed by Ms. Frankenstein, it appears to be zero priority.