"New York City, especially, has a lot of laws that regulate language access," said Olivia Nuñez, NYC Campaign Finance Board community engagement director. "All New Yorkers have the right to vote and to get a ballot in their language."

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New York City’s linguistic diversity is vast, with residents speaking just over 700 languages .

Language access in New York City elections is governed by a multi-layered framework of federal, state, and city laws, covering different segments of the non-English-speaking electorate. These laws cover a little more than a dozen languages—the most widely spoken ones.

"New York City, especially, has a lot of laws that regulate language access," Olivia Nuñez, NYC Campaign Finance Board community engagement director, explained. "We actually have more laws in place of protection than even at the federal level does."

In New York State, about 5.96 million people aged 5 and over spoke a language other than English at home in 2024, according to Census data. A New York City Campaign Finance Board report published that same year found that 16.4 percent of New York City citizens of voting age had limited English proficiency. In boroughs like Queens and the Bronx, this percentage is even higher, accounting for 20.7 and 19.5 percent of voting-age residents, respectively.

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Several local agencies that provide services to non-English-speaking voters have trained and recruited hundreds of interpreters, who have been deployed to the city’s early voting sites ( early voting kicked off on Saturday, and will run through Sunday, Nov. 1). A second, slightly larger team of interpreters is preparing to do the same on Election Day on Tuesday.

City Limits put together this guide to help New York voters understand their rights at the polls regarding language access .

In 1975, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act of 1965, adding protections to remove barriers that prevented people with limited English proficiency from voting in elections.

The amendment ordered regions with significant numbers of people who speak a language other than English at home to provide them with language assistance at the polls. Under these provisions, eight New York counties— including Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx —must provide interpretation services to voters in certain languages, including Spanish , at select poll sites.

New York State also has its own language access protections. In 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the John. R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York, lowering the population thresholds (compared to federal rules) that require localities to offer multilingual voting assistance.

New York’s " 2 Percent or 300-Individual Rule " requires local governments to translate election materials into languages other than English when this percentage of the population has limited English proficiency (LEP) skills, based on data from the American Community Survey. There's additional criteria mandating translations when there are more than 4,000 LEP-eligible voters in a specific political subdivision.

Under the law, translated materials—like voter registration forms, notices, instructions and ballots themselves—must be of "equal quality" to English versions.

Additionally, when the language spoken by a "minority group" has been historically oral or unwritten, the state of New York is required to provide oral interpreters for translation.