Associated Press
With voting already under way in Florida’s Aug. 23 election, officials in a county where about one in four voters are Hispanic are scrambling to fix a Spanish translation error that can’t help efforts to raise more money for education.
The Broward school district — the nation’s sixth largest serving 271,517 students — is asking voters to double the tax rate to help cover the costs of teacher raises and more school security staff and to bolster mental health programs. The proposal would increase a tax from one half a mill — which is about $50 per $100,000 in home value — to a full mill.
But the Spanish version of that question translated “one mill” into “one million” and said the funding would pay for an administrative person who oversees resources, not for school police officers. It also wrongly translated “essential instruction” into “essential expenditures.”
The issue came to light when a Spanish-speaking voter contacted the South Florida SunSentinel.
More than 64,000 citizens had already sent in their vote-by-mail ballots by Wednesday afternoon for the Aug. 23 election, the SunSentinel reported. Early voting at polling places begins Saturday in Florida.
The school district sent a new translation to the Broward Supervisor of Elections. This language will be posted at polling locations and early voting sites, and also appear in future Vote-by-Mail ballots, district spokeswoman Keyla Concepción told the newspaper.
“The Supervisor of Elections Office has also placed the information on its website. The District will share the notification through all its distribution channels to ensure the public is informed about the revision,” she said.
The “Secure the Next Generation Renewal” school district referendum comes as funding voters approved in 2018 for such initiatives is set to expire, the Miami Herald reported. If approved, this referendum would run from fiscal year 2023 to 2027.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
3 comments
Paul Passarelli
August 12, 2022 at 1:11 pm
This story points to *TWO* major flaws in early voting. The first is that the ballots should be in English, and people who cannot read them should not be permitted to vote.
The second is that early voting based on erroneous printing should be a crime that punishes the election officials with expulsion from their rolls and a twenty year ban from any government employment whatsoever.
YYep
August 13, 2022 at 9:35 pm
I think there’s more then English and Spanish language preference out there folks I could name a few.
Paul Passarelli
August 14, 2022 at 9:31 am
Thank you for demonstrating two failures that *SHOULD* disqualify you from voting:
1) anonymous profile.
2) bad grammar & incorrect spelling.
The pendulum is swinging away from the Leftist lunacy that borrows from the lyrics of Mungo Jerry “just do what you feel”. This country is craving a return to order.
If you’re lucky, then someone like me will be listened to, I advocate responsibility & I do not support the use of violence to achieve political goals.
If we’re unlucky then the Socialists or the Fascists will gain power and they will do what they’ve done in the past; line up the dissidents against a wall & shoot.
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