LA TO ADD ARMENIAN, RUSSIAN AND FARSI TO CITY BALLOTS
ARMENPRESS
AUGUST 2, 2012
YEREVAN
YEREVAN, AUGUST 2, ARMENPRESS: The City of Los Angeles will now
provide election services in Armenian, Russian and Farsi, and the three
languages could be on ballots by 2015. As Armenpress reports citing
Southern California Publicc Radio, councilman Paul Krekorian, who
is the first Armenian-American to be elected to the Los Angeles City
Council, recommended that election outreach and pollworker recruitment
be done in Armenian for the city’s 28,000 registered voters of Armenian
descent. An amendment added Russian and Farsi to those recommendations.
“We’re the city with the greatest diversity in this country. There
are 92 languages spoken by the parents of LAUSD students at home,”
Krekorian said. “The third most commonly spoken language by those
who are not perfectly fluent in English is Armenian, after Spanish
and Korean.”
The City Clerk already provides election services in eight languages
other than English: Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Spanish,
Tagalog and Vietnamese, per a federal mandate. Local municipalities
can voluntarily add other languages at their discretion.
“This phenomenon is also practiced by some of our companion
jurisdictions like Glendale and Burbank,” said City Clerk June
Lagmay. “They are not under federal mandate, but they have voluntarily
added those languages as a service to their community”.
The City Clerk’s Office estimates it will cost about $109,000 to
provide outreach and recruitment in Armenian for the 2013 election.