Washington, Oct 25 (SocialNews.XYZ) An Indian-American voter in Chicago can cast a ballot on Nov 3 on a touchscreen in Hindi, Gujarati or Urdu at every polling site in the city, while one in Texas, home to more than 628,000 Indian Americans, will find no Indian language on the ballot at all, an IANS review of election offices across the country has found.
The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners offers touchscreen and audio ballots in the three languages at every site, and paper ballots in Hindi in precincts with high need. Bilingual officials speaking Hindi and Urdu staffed early-voting sites in Wards 33, 34, 39 and 40 earlier this year, with Gujarati also offered in Ward 40. Suburban Cook County runs phone hotlines in Hindi at (312) 603-6743, Gujarati at 603-6746 and Urdu at 603-6748.
The picture is patchier elsewhere.
In Nassau County, New York, the state Board of Elections determined in July 2025 that the county must provide Malayalam under the New York Voting Rights Act, with about 6,509 Asian Indian voting-age citizens with limited English.
The state posts Malayalam versions of mail, absentee and accessible-ballot request forms. But IANS found no evidence on the Nassau Board of Elections website of a Malayalam ballot, a Malayalam sample ballot or Malayalam interpreters days before the vote.
Middlesex County, New Jersey, is covered for Asian Indian languages under Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which extends to ballots. IANS found only vote-by-mail applications in Gujarati, Hindi and Punjabi, and no evidence of translated ballots or sample ballots.
In Texas, which had 628,608 Indian Americans in the 2023 American Community Survey, IANS found only remote Hindi interpreters in Harris County. The Harris ballot itself is in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese.
Help is more visible in other places. In Queens, the New York City Board of Elections provides Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali interpreters, with Bengali on ballot-marking devices. Brooklyn offers Bengali and Urdu.
California counties provide reference, or facsimile, ballots in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Telugu, Gujarati and Nepali under state law. Santa Clara County lists Hindi as an official ballot language. In Hamtramck, Michigan, the city has posted a Bangla sample ballot for November, even though a court-ordered Bengali programme expired in 2025.
In July 2025, the Justice Department issued guidance to agencies to minimise non-essential multilingual services.
Section 203 remains law through 2032. NPR reported in September that a 78-page Department of Homeland Security list of jurisdictions offering non-English election materials covered Section 203 jurisdictions, which means it likely includes Indian- and Bangladeshi-language areas such as Cook, Middlesex, Queens and Hamtramck.
The list has not been published. The Census Bureau’s next Section 203 determinations, which decide which counties must offer which languages, are expected in December 2026.
The stakes are measured in numbers. According to AAPI Data, about 891,000 adults in the US speak Hindi, the fifth most spoken language among Asian adults. Some 529,000 speak Urdu, 498,000 Telugu, 458,000 Gujarati and 429,000 Bengali.
About 16.7 per cent of Asian Indian adults have limited English proficiency, the lowest among major Asian groups, against 44.2 per cent of Bangladeshi adults.
Census data show 998,170 Indian Americans in California, 628,608 in Texas, 446,417 in New Jersey, 416,407 in New York and 277,961 in Illinois.
Under federal law, any voter who needs help may bring a person of their choice into the booth, other than an employer or union representative.
Voters seeking help can call the APIAVote and Advancing Justice-AAJC hotline at 1-888-API-VOTE, which lists assistance in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Urdu.
Source: IANS
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