The city Board of Elections is going to try something different this November: Printing ballots voters can actually read.
The Board
took a beating over the eye-straining six-point typeface
on last year’s general election ballots from a legion of elected officials and watchdog groups who said the print was preposterously small.
The 2013 problem arose because of the number of languages — as many as five in some pockets of Queens — into which the ballots had to be translated.
Now the Board will do what some say it could well have done last year: Print no more than three languages on any single ballot, which will boost the type size to 10 points.
The agency insisted it had no choice but to microsize the print citywide last year because providing ballots with varying type sizes might trigger accusations of discrimination and possibly lawsuits.
New York City has 5,369 election districts, according to the Board.
Of those, just 194 — all located in polyglot Queens — have enough qualifying voters to require ballots in four languages.
And in only 79 districts — also all in Queens — must the Board provide ballots in all five languages it offers: English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Bengali.
In those 79 spots, pollsites will be equipped with three sets of ballots, each printed in English and Spanish plus one of the other three Asian languages.
Ballots in English and Spanish only will be offered in the Bronx and Staten Island. In areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn where they’re needed, ballots will be printed in three languages: English, Spanish, and Chinese.
“This today is not the end of the process; rather, it’s the beginning of the process,” Board Executive Director Michael Ryan said after the vote to change the ballot format.
“We now know that we’re going to be using three languages, and we have to develop the workstreams necessary to accommodate the usage of the three ballots and do the training for the folks in the boroughs that are affected on how to do the ballot distribution.”
The promise of this particular print size is only for the November election: Ryan noted that the number of candidates and parties in future city elections can’t be predicted, and so obviously neither can the amount of information that can be squeezed onto the ballot.
The space crunch is also less of an issue for the upcoming primaries, since ballots only list candidates of one party.
“I think it’s a significant improvement,” said Alex Camarda of Citizens Union, who testified in favor of the trilingual ballot at Tuesday’s meeting.
While he and other advocates say both that the Board could have avoided the mini-type issue and also has more reforms to make, Camarda said the change will make the ballot “more readable for hundreds of thousands of people, particularly seniors and people who are visually impaired.”
IMAGES: CELESTE KATZ
