Assemblyman William Colton (D – Gravesend, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, and Dyker Heights) is outraged with the New York City Board of Elections decision to sue the City Administration to keep interpreters outside of poll sites for this Tuesday’s Special Election.

“The NYC Board of Elections must agree to provide language interpreters where large numbers of voters have a primary language other than English. These are the top 15 spoken languages: Russian, Haitian Creole, Italian, Polish, Arabic, Yiddish, Greek, Albanian, Tagalog, Urdu and French, which must be added to the languages that are already covered by the Voting Rights Act,” said Colton.

“The NYC Board of Elections should be reducing barriers for voting and must stop building obstacles for the seniors and others that are not comfortable of speaking and reading the English language. The Board of Elections has gone too far in refusing to provide language assistance in those 15 languages. Absurdly they are prohibiting their inspectors who may speak that language from helping voters. It appears that the Board of Elections is deliberately violating its mission by making it more difficult to vote. I strongly believe that the Board of Elections is depriving citizens of their rights to vote. Enough is enough,” Colton stated.