Two weeks before Election Day, the city is fighting an attempt by the U.S. Justice Department to appoint federal observers for Philadelphia elections beginning Nov. 7 and lasting past next year's presidential race, until the end of 2009.

The effort to appoint the observers stems from a lawsuit filed by the federal government 14 days ago alleging that the city has violated the rights of its Hispanic voters.

Specifically, it charges that the city hasn't adequately recruited and trained bilingual poll workers, failed to provide sufficient election-related materials in Spanish, and prohibited Hispanic voters with limited English from choosing someone to help them inside the voting booth, which law permits.

"The record in this case clearly demonstrates that the city does not exercise sufficient control over its voting places to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act," the lawsuit states. It alludes to 50 Hispanic city residents who encountered problems in elections here, most since 2003. One, Myrna Cruz, testified that a poll worker forced her to vote for John Street for mayor in 2003, when she wanted to vote for Sam Katz. Others said they were ridiculed by poll workers who asked why they hadn't learned English.

The suit also says the city has no program to identify "the need for or the placement of Spanish-speaking poll workers and interpreters on election day" and that the city has paid people to be interpreters who don't speak Spanish.

I was pretty surprised when I first heard this because every division gets all its
election material, sample ballots, ballot questions,
voting rights explanations, etc, in both English and Spanish. I want to say the actual ballots
on the voting machines are in English and Spanish, too, but I can't recall. And both versions of all the election materials are conspicuously posted at the poll. This was the case for all four years I served as an election judge. This is all very odd to me and I have a hard time believing the charges DoJ is leveling.