LANSING, Mich — To ensure every Michigander can exercise their right to vote, the Michigan Department of State (MDOS) provides bilingual and English-limited voters with resources and tools to successfully cast their ballots.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State of Jocelyn Benson formed the Michigan Language Task Force, which provides outreach and creates resources to push through accessibility barriers. The task force is comprised of more than 50 organizations and 200 partners statewide. Ahead of the election, the task force equipped the state website with voter resources.
The resources include voter registration applications, absentee ballot applications and toolkits, all translated into Arabic, Spanish, Bengali, Korean, Tagalog, Mandarin, Burmese, Hindi and Urdu.
“Ensuring every voter in Michigan knows their rights and how to exercise them is critical to a health democracy,” Benson said. “I’m grateful for the partners who have stepped up to make sure all citizens in every community have the resources and tools they need to cast their vote with confidence.”
As a part of its outreach efforts, the task force held voter education events in multiple languages. Recordings of these events can be found on the MDOS Facebook Page. The events are in Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin, Burmese, Filipino and Bengali.
“MDOS specifically worked to recruit multilingual poll workers in partnership with external organizations and clerks across the state and direct those interested individuals to jurisdictions where their language skills were most needed or wanted,” a press release from MDOS reads. “To ensure language accessibility on Election Day, the Michigan Language Access Task Force will promote hotlines to assist voters at the polls.”
These hotlines include the following:
- Spanish: 888-VE-Y-VOTA (888-839-8682)
- Arabic: 844-YALLA-US (844-925-5287)
- APIA Bengali, Cantonese, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog, Urdu or Vietnamese: 888-API-VOTE (888-274-8683)
For more information on the task force and its initiatives, contact Bilal Hammoud at Hammoudb@michigan.gov.
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