CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County is still bargaining with the U.S. Department of Justice over whether to provide bilingual ballots to voters this fall.
No consensus was reached Wednesday despite hours of private discussion among county election board members, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, county Prosecutor Bill Mason and Justice Department officials. The group will resume discussions on Monday, Aug. 23.
"There's some fundamental differences," Mason said.
In play is a little-used section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits denying citizens educated in Puerto Rico the right to vote based on their proficiency in English.
The county has known of the provision for years and took steps to reach out to that group, said board member Rob Frost.
But Frost indicated Wednesday the federal government wants a lot more from the county board.
"What we've had in the last few weeks is the Justice Department coming in and insisting on using a dull meat cleaver where a very sharp scalpel is needed," he said.
Earlier in the week, Frost said federal officials told the board they had the authority to sue the county.
Nobody at Wednesday's meeting would talk specifically what the federal government wants, or how far the county is willing to go for the November general election. The Justice Department may be demanding that bilingual ballots be used in all county precincts, which would cost the county about $500,000 in printing alone. Ballots are supposed to go to the printer by mid-September.
About 4.4 percent of the county's 1.3 million residents are Hispanic, and nearly 70 percent of those Hispanic Americans are of Puerto Rican descent.
Since 2006 the board has hired Spanish-speaking, as well as Russian- and Chinese-speaking pollworkers, board Director Jane Platten said. It has also printed Spanish pamphlets describing the county's new districts, dates, deadlines and other issues.
The department began investigating Cuyahoga County in 2006, when it monitored polling locations in the Hispanic community, according to the board. It returned for elections in 2008 and 2009.
Two weeks ago, justice officials mandated bilingual ballots for the Nov. 2 election, for which overseas voting begins Sept. 18.
The short time frame, Brunner said, "was a function of bureaucracy in the Justice Department."
Mike Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, called Wednesday's meeting "productive." He would not comment on the government's demands.
A Justice Department analysis showed the county has 34,000 people of Puerto Rican descent, 6,000 of them with limited English proficiency, Frost said. Within Cuyahoga County's 1,069 voting precincts are 70 precincts with 100 or more voters with common Hispanic surnames.
The board already agreed to translate ballots in four County Council districts into Spanish for the Sept. 7 primary and line up bilingual workers to staff those 70 precincts at the Nov. 2 election.
Bilingual ballots would require translating political party names, offices, instructions and issues. Candidates' names would remain the same.
While no other Ohio county may be forced to provide bilingual ballots this fall, all of California, New Mexico and Texas already must provide Spanish and English ballots, said Daniel Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.
Another 140 local jurisdictions outside of those states must provide ballots in two or more languages.
The requirement is based on a strict calculation -- 10,000 limited English-proficiency voters or 5 percent of the population, Tokaji said.
"Usually after census numbers comes out, there will be a determination of whether a county is over a particular threshold," Tokaji said. "What's happening here seems to be something different."
In 2003, the Justice Department brought its first case over the provision pertaining to Puerto Rican Americans since 1965 against Berks County, Pennsylvania. The federal government won and has since monitored elections there.
Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, a Justice Department lawyer who visited the Cuyahoga board in July, wrote about the case in a Feb. 2009 law journal, arguing the law should be used to protect the rights of more than 1 million Puerto Ricans living stateside.
She argued the provision should be revitalized as a tool to protect against the growing tide of discrimination against Latinos in the post-9/11 era. "Latino voting rights are under siege," she wrote.