The Justice Department is pressuring Fort Bend County officials to take specific actions to comply with bilingual requirements in the Voting Rights Act, FortBendNow has learned.

Officials from the Voting Section, within the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, recently crafted a legal document outlining a list of actions to be taken by county election officials under the Act.

That document was presented to the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court last week in executive session, but commissioners did not sign it.

“They did present an agreement to the county that they asked us to sign off on,” Fort Bend County Elections Administrator Steve Raborn said Tuesday. “And that’s why they had the closed session.”

The matter wasn’t discussed in public, and neither Raborn nor Assistant County Attorney Roy Cordes would provide details of the proposed agreement. “There really could be litigation out of it,” Raborn said.

County Judge Robert Hebert and County Attorney Ben Childers both were out of the office on Tuesday and unavailable for comment.

Raborn and people associated with Fort Bend County political parties say Joel Ard of the DOJ Voting Section has been in contact with them about county election issues.

Ard, who didn’t return a phone call for comment on Tuesday, did contact attorney and Former Fort Bend County Democratic Party Chairman Don Bankston.

Ard indicated he “is concerned with language issues,” under the Voting Rights Act, involving both Spanish-speaking and Vietnamese-speaking residents of Fort Bend County, Bankston said Tuesday. “Especially under the new voting machine system.”

Bankston said Ard may be returning to the county this week. “He is coming down and trying to gather enough anecdotal evidence to convince” county officials that they should sign the agreement on actions to be taken under the Voting Rights Act.

“We’re just trying to find out, what exactly does the DOJ want?” one county official said. “I think most of us have a reluctance to enter into a consent decree with the Justice Department because it implies you’ve done something wrong.”

They may have little choice, if that’s what the Justice Department believes. The DOJ’s Voting Section has emphasized enforcement of “language minority provisions” of the Voting Rights Act in the past two years.

For example, in March 2004, the Justice Department convinced Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman and the Harris County Commission to sign a memorandum of understanding to “protect the rights of Vietnamese-speaking voters,” DOJ said. The memorandum and agreement “details the county’s responsibilities in providing qualified minority-language voters full access to the voting process.”

Steps Harris County was required to take under the agreement included hiring someone to coordinate a county Vietnamese language election program and providing all voter registration and election information and materials, including the voting machine ballots, in Vietnamese.

If a county or city declines to sign such a memorandum of understanding, and the Justice Department obtains evidence that the Voting Rights Act is not being complied with, it can file claims under language minority provisions of the act.

That’s occurred 11 times since 2004, most recently in August in Ector County, Texas, which the Justice Department said was in violation of the Voting Rights Act due to “election practices and procedures as they affect Spanish-speaking citizens of the county.”

Justice Department lawyers said the county, home to Midland and Odessa, had failed to provide an adequate number of bilingual poll workers trained to assist Spanish-speaking voters.

To avoid a long, expensive lawsuit, county officials signed a consent decree acknowledging they had not fully complied with the Voting Rights Act, and agreeing, among other things, to provide “Spanish-language assistance” at all polling sites; to provide at least one bilingual election official at any precinct where there are from 100 to 249 registered voters with Spanish surnames; at least two such officials at any precinct with between 250 and 499 voters with Spanish surnames, and at least three such election officials at any precinct with 500 or more registered voters with Spanish surnames.

The consent agreement also requires Ector County to employ a person to coordinate the county’s bilingual election program, and establish an advisory group to assist and inform residents about the program.

And, the agreement calls for the presence of a federal examiner “as long as the decree is in effect,” and federal observers “to observe all aspects of voting conducted in the polls on election day.”

Officials from the Voting Section, within the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, recently crafted a legal document outlining a list of actions to be taken by county election officials. That document was presented to the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court last week in executive session, but commissioners did not sign it.

“They did present an agreement to the county that they asked us to sign off on,” Fort Bend County Elections Administrator Steve Raborn said Tuesday. “And that’s why they had the closed session.”