Do people have a problem with Latino voters having a "say" in the state of Washington?

 

A couple days ago a story appeared concerning an audit of the 2020 election in the state of Washington, which claimed that in Franklin County only 0.25 percent of the ballots cast were rejected for one reason or the other, one of the lowest rates in the state. Chelan County also had a low rejection rate, at 0.28.  While the rejection rate of minority voters was higher than for whites, this did not constitute “bias,” according to the auditors. But as a report by the organization InvestigateWest revealed, during the 2020 election these two counties, along with Yakima County, bias and vote suppression against Latino voters is not only obvious and real, but this so-called “liberal” state seems to have very little appetite to do anything to correct it.

INVW has found, for example, that while Franklin County seems to have a low ballot rejection rate, people with Spanish surnames appear to have been the ones principally targeted for rejection in a county that voted heavily—or rather “heavier”—for Trump in 2020. People with Spanish surnames were 10.4 times more likely than the voting population at large to be rejected for alleged “signature mismatches,” which unlike other reasons for rejecting votes is a judgment call rather than one based on legal criteria. Chelan County’s Latino voter rejection rate was 6.3 times the general population, and Yakima County had a rejection rate 7.5 times greater than average.

INVW noted that some people do not learn “cursive” handwriting, or rarely use it, and might print their signatures. In Benton County, another heavily Republican state that suppresses a large Latino vote, auditor Brenda Chilton “perceives that the prevalence of print signatures is higher among Latino voters. And print is just more difficult to compare to cursive.” According to Itiel Dror, a handwriting researcher at the University College London, “Handwriting comparison is not a science, let alone an exact science. Even two handwriting experts could review the same pair of signatures and arrive at different conclusions. This leads to legitimate signatures being rejected, and potentially fraudulent ones being accepted.” That latter probably applies more often to white voters.

Because “signature instability” is common, because signatures can be "altered" depending on conditions, or change with time and age, there is some movement toward removing the use of signatures altogether, although in Arizona there is an illegal law being considered to make signature mismatches a "criminal" offense. In the meantime, bias against Latino voters in heavily Republican counties makes vote checkers more “eagle-eyed” about seeing any kind of “difference.” And signatures do change “naturally.” When I was given a Social Security card when I was a teenager, my signature on it had “looped” capital letters, as I had been taught these as a child:

 

 

But after I joined the Army, I changed the way I wrote (as opposed to “printing”) capital letters, for no reason other than I thought it looked “cooler”:

 

 

But my old signature remained the “official” one for Social Security purposes for a few decades until one day somebody stole my wallet with the card in it, and I had to request a replacement, which was signed off with what has otherwise been the only signature I have used on important documents. But like a lot of people, I don’t always properly sign documents. For example, when I sign off on something to confirm the receipt of a package, or a credit card receipt, I just quickly “sign” with an unreadable scrawl—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t “me” who signed it.

As an aside, I was kind of a fan of the 1980s group The Bangles (or at least I thought they were a lot better band than The Go-Gos), and when they released their reunion album Doll Revolution, the third-party distributor releasing the CD offered the  carrot that the CDs were signed by the band members. So I sent in for it, and when it arrived there were three signatures with the names written out, but I asked myself "Is that one-character doodle that looks like it was something a one-year-old baby would make supposed to be Susanna Hoffs' "signature?" I contacted the distributor who apologized for her doing that, and I suspected that I wasn't the only he had to apologize to about this disrespectful-to-fans behavior.

Anyways, the higher alleged signature mismatch issue is hardly the only roadblock that Latino voters in this “liberal” state face, particularly in counties and cities that have “at-large” voting which allows the majority (white voters, that is) to control who is elected, effectively rendering minority voters—and most often in places with large Latino populations—entirely voiceless. There were lawsuits last year charging Benton, Chelan and Yakima Counties with engaging in the disenfranchisement of Latino voters in violation of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments, and then there was a court reversal of an agreement in Franklin County to redo its district map to reflect that the county is 34 percent Hispanic.

And this January a lawsuit was filed by the Campaign Legal Center and the UCLA Voting Rights Project on behalf of Latino voters in the state, charging that “the proposed state legislative map drawn by the Washington State Redistricting Commission” as “having the intent and effect of ‘cracking’ Latino voters into several legislative districts with white majorities in the Yakima Valley and Pasco regions in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.” Despite the “promise” that the 15^th Legislative District would reflect its otherwise heavily Latino population in accordance of the Voting Rights Act, what happened instead was that “The final state legislative map adopted by the commission in November 2021 was drawn in such a way that Latino voters in the Yakima Valley will not be able to elect state legislative candidates of their choice.”

The CLC has charged that the state drew the district in a way that excluded active Latino voters and place within it a dominate core of white rural voters, and with it the probability of electing their preferred candidate rather than one preferred by Latino voters. The CLC charges that the “the District 15 voting area in the Yakima Valley is a ‘façade’ of a majority-minority district and violates the Voting Rights Act because it won’t allow Latinos the chance to elect candidates of their choice.”

It's a "funny" thing, but according to the Census, 92 percent of the people in Franklin County are "white," but upon breakdown 63 percent are "non-Hispanic white," while 34 percent are "Hispanic." Thus more hypocrisy of our times: This breakdown suggests that most Latinos in places like Franklin County consider themselves to be "white," but this is more about "culture" and a useless attempt to "differentiate" themselves from indigenous people. The reality is that non-Hispanics whites think that they are just as "other" as the "brown ones." 

In another anecdote, when I was working at the airport I was sent to the ID office to have a DHS decal placed on my ID badge, which was required to work on international flights; I ended up sitting for two hours because despite the fact I had already been fingerprinted and had an FBI background check years earlier, the ICE agent on duty (a white female) was convinced that people who looked "Mexican" like me but had "American" names must have "faked" birth certificates; a supervisor had to be called to "vouch" for me.

So while we celebrate Black History Month—after Hispanic “History Month” passed unnoticed—Latino voters are still fighting for their own rights even in an atmosphere of political and media indifference.