Lost in translation

Minority voters are being intimidated. They are told that they will be arrested if they exercise their constitutional right to vote. Mississippi in 1968? Actually, California in 2006. Tan Nguyen is the Republican running for US Congress in the California 47th District. The 47th District is an isle of blue in the sea of red that is Orange County. The incumbent is Democrat Loretta Sanchez.

To relate this to television, the 47th District was the seat Sam Seaborne ran for in the West Wing, though they moved the 47th District to the coast where the 48th District is. It also borrowed from Mel Carahan's death yet still winning a seat in the US Senate against John Ashcroft.

Anyways, Tan Nguyen's office sent out this little bombshell to registered Democrat voters in his district. Of course, registered Republican voters are not immigrants. Translated from Spanish to English, it states:

You are being sent this letter because you were recently registered to vote. If you are a citizen of the United States, we ask that you participate in the democratic process of voting.

You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time, and you will be deported for voting without having a right to do so.

At the same time, you are advised that the government of the United States is installing a new computer system to verify the names of all new registered voters that vote in the October and November elections. Anti-immigration organizations can ask for information from this new computer system.

Unlike Mexico, here there is no incentive to vote. There is not a voter registration card in the United States. Therefore, it is useless and dangerous to vote in any election if you are not a citizen of the United States.

Do not listen to any politician that tells you the opposite. They are only looking out for their own interests. They only want to win elections without any regard to what happens to you.

It could be a translation error, since the original Spanish in the letter was quite bad, and probably not from a native speaker. The letter writer could have intended to mean only illegal immigrants, and registered Democrat voters probably included some illegal immigrants who shouldn't have registered to vote in the first place. However, in the 47th, 35% of the registered voters are Hispanic and 18% are Asian, so the chances are a significant number voters in the district are naturalized citizens who immigrated. They are being told their names are in the hands of anti-immigration groups like the Minutemen. The irony is that Tan Nguyen himself is an immigrant from South Vietnam. So can Tan Nguyen vote for himself? Nguyen denies he sent the letter, but no one believes him. He has made himself a leper. The Orange County Republican Party is demanding he withdraw or they will tell everyone to vote for a write-in. The California Attorney-General's office is now asking Nyugen questions. It's only a matter of time until the US Department of Justice starts asking questions too, because voter intimidation is a federal crime under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. By the way, the Voting Rights Act was recently renewed and there was actually a question of whether renewing it was necessary; voter intimidation is so 1960s.

Frankly, this is just a footnote in the 2004 election that people like me use to poke at Republicans. Loretta Sanchez is going to win. She enjoys immense popularity in the district and is trouncing Nguyen in the polls. He is unlikely to win and this debacle will probably not make his position any worse than it already is. Tan Nguyen is an opportunist. He's running because no other Republican wanted to be a sacrificial lamb. Two years ago, he ran as a Democrat. The Orange County Republican Party chairman seriously questioned whether he was a true conservative and I guess his extremist position on immigration is to assert his conservative credentials. However, for me, it is an amusing footnotes, and I'm all about the amusing footnotes.