The Boston Globe offers this report, which begins: “A three-judge federal panel has denied a move by the Justice Department to require that transliterated candidate names be printed on the ballot in certain Chinese-speaking precincts in Boston. In a decision filed Friday, the judges sided with Secretary of State William F. Galvin that agreements to translate ballots do not require transliteration, rendering non-Chinese names into Chinese characters. The Globe reported in June that language specialists said that with Chinese characters, Mitt Romney could be read as ‘Sticky’ or ‘Uncooked Rice,’ Fred Thompson as ‘Virtue Soup,’ and Thomas M. Menino could be ‘Rainbow Farmer’ or ‘Imbecile.'”
In the district court opinion, the court notes that the question whether “bilingual” means “transliteration” is a matter of first impression, but it declines to reach the issue on grounds that it reads the parties’ consent decree as not covering transliteration. A fascinating question about how to best protect the voting rights of Chinese reading voters. Thanks to a reader for passing along the Globe story.