SPOKANE, Wash. — The League of Women Voters in Spokane announced on Thursday that translated sample ballots for the 2024 presidential election are now available in nine languages: Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese, Swahili, Ukrainian, Dari and Kinyarwanda.
The sample ballots were created in a collaboration between the Spokane County Elections Office and the League of Women Voters of the Spokane Area to promote the right to vote as a fundamental principle of the United States democracy.
The ballots can be accessed on the League of Women Voters' website and on the Spokane County Elections Office website. The translated sample ballots can be read online or printed.
The Spanish Sample Ballot will also be published in the October issue of La Prensa Bilingüe.
The sample ballots include all federal, state and county candidate races as well as the advisory measures appearing on the Spokane County November 2024 election ballots.
Voters will be able to see the candidates and measures that pertain to their district by placing the translated ballots side-by-side with the official ballot in English. After reading the instructions and all text in their primary language, they can complete and submit their official ballots after being accurately informed.
In 2019, Vicky Dalton, the Spokane County Auditor, reached out to the Spokane community seeking an organization to work with her office on creating translated ballots for the voters of Spokane County.
Because Spokane County is not mandated by state or federal law to translate voting materials, the County Elections Office does not have the resources to create translations. The League of Women Voters accepted the invitation and produced translated ballots in six languages for the November 2020 General Election.
For the upcoming 2024 General Election, the League of Women Voters expanded the translations to nine languages to serve newer populations of naturalized citizens.
“I appreciate that the League stepped forward to fill a need in the Spokane community. Voters who are not proficient in English will be more confident in casting their ballot,” said Dalton.
To produce the translated ballots, the League worked with AvantPage, a translation company that works with the Washington Secretary of State’s Election Division.
The League says a significant donation by the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund along with League resources supported the professional translators’ work and the production of print copies that will be distributed by the project’s partner agencies to those without easy internet access.
The League of Women Voters partnered also with many organizations to provide workshops to naturalized citizens about Washington’s election system and voting process.
