City settles election lawsuit

By Charles Sercombe
Hamtramck city officials wasted no time in settling an election lawsuit that was filed just several weeks ago.
The city did not receive a copy of the lawsuit until three weeks ago.
The lawsuit was co-filed by a Hamtramck voter, Rahima Begum, who alleged:
• That Hamtramck failed to provide accurate ballot translations in Bengali.
• That the city has not translated into Bengali any part of the city’s election website.
• That the city failed to recruit, train and assign a “sufficient number of Bengali-speaking poll workers and interpreters to provide effective Bengali-language assistance.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, says the city was notified of these shortcomings in 2020, but failed to take corrective action.
The other co-plaintiff in the lawsuit is Detroit Action, an organization that “promotes the involvement of black and brown community members in the electoral process.”
Mayor Karen Majewski and the city council recently met in a special meeting, which was closed to the public, to discuss the lawsuit and settlement terms.
She said there was no point in dragging out the matter.
“… Both sides were committed to a fair voting process, and because we both wanted the same outcome for the voters, we were able to reach a quick an agreement that worked for both sides,” Majewski told The Review.
She said the agreement requires that, for the “next four years, our elections will be monitored by a five-person advisory group, headed by a paid coordinator of our compliance efforts.”
Although the lawsuit did not seek monetary punishment, there will be a cost to the city to meet this obligation.
Majewski said it is estimated that the city will pay $20,000 to $30,000 a year to finance the settlement terms.
The plaintiffs did, however, seek reimbursement for attorney fees, but that is not included in the settlement.
The city relies on state election officials to do translations, but the state was not named in the lawsuit.
Former City Clerk August Gitschlag, who supervised Hamtramck elections, said he received only a handful of complaints about the Bengali translations.
He said there have been differences of opinion on which Bengali dialect to use for those translation.
Posted July 9, 2021