Votos sin Barreras continues push to get Spanish-language ballots on appropriate websites

The discovery of the issue came during the voter education portion of the Muskego Way Forward neighborhood meeting a few weeks before the 2024 spring election in Milwaukee. 

That issue – non-compliance with the Voting Rights Act provision mandating certain election materials be provided bilingually – is yet to be resolved nearly two years later as the 2026 spring election looms.

Those two years of lack of clarity and follow-through have left some Spanish-speaking voters in the dark and feeling disempowered.

It was when Eloisa Gomez of the Latinx Voter Outreach team of the Milwaukee County chapter of the League of Women Voters guided a group of those voters through the process of checking their preview ballots at myvote.wi.gov that night that they learned they were available in English only.

Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires clerks within communities that qualify to provide bilingual materials in the designated minority language, including ballots, voter registration forms, instructional materials and public notices regarding polling places and registration deadlines.

“That's really important to understand, actually, what is on the ballot,” said Maria Torres, an activist in Milwaukee who discovered the issue that night when she looked up her ballot on her phone. “Yeah, because when there are some things that they put in writing, if we don't understand, how are we going to vote for that? We need to have a clear understanding.”

It so happens there were three referendums on the ballot that spring. Referendums tend to be hard enough to decipher in English but not having that language available to minority-language speakers effectively disenfranchised them.

Number of communities under provision expected to double

A community falls under the Sec. 203 provision of the VRA if more than 5% of the voting-age population – or 10,000 or more voting-age citizens – speak a single minority language or have limited English proficiency.  Currently six communities in Wisconsin, including Milwaukee and West Milwaukee, fall under the provision. 

When the language gap was discovered, Gomez and Torres brought the matter before the Community Alliances Committee of the League of Women Voters Wisconsin, resulting in the formation of the ad hoc committee Votos sin Barreras (Ballots without Barriers), which has been working ever since to resolve the issue, thus far with little success. 

It matters more than ever because the upcoming twice-a-decade census (the general census is every 10 years, but a Section 203 census is conducted every five years to determine demographic shifts) is expected to double the number of qualifying communities in the state, including, likely, Appleton and Green Bay. 

Currently Milwaukee, West Milwaukee and Arcadia are in compliance by offering ballots in Spanish on their city websites. But three jurisdictions are not: the City of Abbotsford, the Village of Curtis and the Town of Sharon. Ideally, Gomez says she’d like to see the myvote site, considered a one-stop resource for all things voting, provide the Spanish ballot option without the necessity of having to visit the municipality’s site so as to provide uniformity and avoid unnecessary confusion for voters who already must navigate difficult barriers to vote.

Finances, lack of guidance are key issues

In February of last year, Gomez and two other LWV cohorts decided to go to the source of the problem by taking a road trip to all three jurisdictions that remained in non-compliance. In Curtis and Sharon, clerks cited finances and lack of guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commissions as reasons they had yet to post voting information in Spanish – including preview ballots – on their websites.

The cost of meeting the provisions of Section 203 falls to the city, even though it’s a federal mandate. Gomez has urged the clerks in Abbotsville, Curtis and Sharon to reach out to Milwaukee County, which has offered to provide templates translated into Spanish for other communities to use.

“We told them, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Gomez said. “You can gather some of this from existing, larger communities. Now, it may not be one hundred percent a fit, but we think you're going to have a lot that you need already translated into Spanish. So our intent is to go back and talk to these three communities to share with them again about this.”

Additionally, Votos sin Barreras provided the three municipalities with a clerk's resource guide derived from the U.S. Election Commission.

“We created documents about how to recruit bilingual poll workers,” she said. “And what are some best practices? I'm not sure they did much with it. To be honest, we received no feedback from any of the three communities.” 

Testifying at the Wisconsin Elections Commission

Both Gomez and Torres took their concerns before the Wisconsin Elections Commission last fall. Gomez informed the commission that clerks continued to express their frustration over what they perceived as a lack of guidance from the WEC on compliance, though commission chair Ann Jacobs assured Gomez they were always available to answer any questions the clerks might have.

“What I heard from them was they could use support and guidance from WEC staff through the operations manual, or through perhaps some troubleshooting with staff to be able to meet the obligations of 203,” Gomez said, pointing to a 2022 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article in which several clerks were uncertain how to proceed on the Section 203 provision. “In 2025 we heard something similar from two of these communities, and so I'm looking for greater transparency … that would help us know whether or not we're going on in circles.”

Also testifying on the issue was Eileen Newcomer, the Deputy Director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. She said reviews of how the six municipalities conducted the 2024 election revealed “significant inconsistencies” in bilingual materials – including sample ballots – and what she called minimal state-level guidance for clerks and election officials.

“We respectfully urge the commission to ensure that all bilingual ballots required under Section 203 are posted on the myvote website for every election beginning in 2026,  including comprehensive and clear guidance … in the updated commission election administration manual that’s currently in development,” Newcomer said. “Providing equitable access to voting materials is not just a matter of compliance, it's a matter of fairness and democracy. Every eligible voter in Wisconsin deserves equal access to election information regardless of the language they speak.”

Maria Torres, who gave her testimony in Spanish, spoke of her 40 years living in Milwaukee, many of those engaged in activism. She told the commission just how difficult her voting experience had been when she didn’t know English well enough to understand what she was voting for. 

“So, one of the things I did when I arrived in this country was (to show my children) that it is important to be aware of what surrounds us and who is representing us,” she said. “That is one of the things that has always motivated me to encourage voting and to always promote our civic duty, because that is a way we can help each other – not just those like me who belong to the Latino community, but the community in general, society as a whole.”

‘We have those rights here’

Gomez said she doesn’t blame the WEC, which she acknowledges is probably overwhelmed with the obligations of its role. But she said they don’t intend to give up. Will the issue be resolved in time for the fall election this year? She said she hopes so.

“I think that our persistence will pay off,” she said. “I think calling attention to the communities that are not meeting their obligations, I think (the WEC) will see that they do have a role.”

Torres said she sees pushing forward on this project as both a personal and a civic responsibility. More generally, she said she’s worried about the direction of the country, which adds urgency to the issue of Section 203 compliance. 

“But I'm not afraid,” she insisted. “My father used to say we need to address our duties. We need to keep pushing for our rights. The people before us, they fought for that. We cannot let this thing happen, erase all the things that we have here. I was born in Mexico. But the thing is, I still remember that the principle here was democratic.

“The people can speak up if they don't agree with things, but they don't have to have retaliation or be afraid to speak up. Yes, we have those rights here.”

Votos sin Barreras continues push to get Spanish-language ballots on appropriate websites © 2026 by Kelly Fenton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0