Daniel Weintraub offers this column in the Sacramento Bee. It begins: “California’s system of direct democracy could be threatened by a recent federal court decision concluding that the federal Voting Rights Act requires petitions circulated by private citizens to be translated into foreign languages.” The column also mentions the amicus letter I recently filed in the Monterey case: “No one has yet challenged a statewide ballot measure on these grounds, but that seems inevitable. And if the 9th Circuit’s ruling applies to those cases as well, initiative and recall petitions will have to be translated into several languages depending on the demographic makeup of the community in which they are circulated. Richard Hasen, a Loyola Law School professor who has followed the case closely, wrote the Court of Appeals last week urging it to block the ruling from taking effect lest it ‘wreak havoc’ on the state’s June and November elections.” Weintraub concludes: “At the moment, though, the ruling stands, ticking like a political time bomb waiting to explode California’s love affair with the initiative process.”