In another marker of the region's shifting demographics, the federal government said Wednesday that Sacramento County must print ballots and other voting materials in Chinese by the next election.

The change is the latest indication of phenomenal growth in the county's Chinese community, which added about 75 residents a month during the last decade. Only 15 other counties across America are required to print ballots in Chinese.

Several local Chinese residents hailed the move, saying it will increase voter participation and give Chinese a greater voice in local politics.

"The larger community will know we are here," said Sandy Chen Stokes, a nurse and founder of the Chinese American Coalition for Compassionate Care. "We have needs that need to be addressed."

But the change won't come cheap. Printing the new ballots and voting materials likely will cost "several hundred thousand dollars," said Alice Jarboe, Sacramento County assistant registrar. That money will come from the department's existing budget and will probably not require a new appropriation.

County officials have not yet decided whether to print separate Chinese ballots for the 2012 election or to place Chinese in the ballots everyone gets.

"Our goal is to make sure that the voter understands what they are reading," Jarboe said. "Legalese is hard enough to understand in any language."

The mandate was triggered by new census figures and the U.S. Voting Rights Act, which requires foreign-language ballots when more than 10,000 voting-age residents or 5 percent of a jurisdiction speak a particular foreign language and don't speak English fluently.

Sacramento County already prints voting materials in Spanish because of the Voting Rights Act.

County officials expected new census figures to necessitate another language on the ballot – they just weren't sure until Wednesday which language it would be.

Filipinos, not Chinese, are the county's largest Asian ethnic group. But local Filipinos didn't meet the threshold for a ballot in Tagalog because they're twice as likely to speak English fluently as local Chinese, census figures show.

About 39,000 Chinese of all ages live in Sacramento County, and roughly 15,500 of them speak English "less than very well." Another 9,000 county residents are of mixed Chinese heritage.

Many of Sacramento's Chinese residents came here late in life, following children who found success, several local leaders said.

"For adults who come here, it's extremely hard to pick up English," said Jerry Chong, a Sacramento attorney and one of the co-founders of the Council of Asian Pacific Islanders Together for Advocacy and Leadership, or CAPITAL.

Speakers of Russian, Hmong and Vietnamese also came close to reaching the threshold for their own ballot – and may get it following the next census sample in five years.

Some find the language provisions of the Voting Rights Act strange because only U.S. citizens can vote, and most naturalized U.S. citizens must demonstrate basic English skills. But Chinese leaders said many in their community feel more comfortable filling out forms and ballots in their native language.

Ryan Chin, who recently ran for Sacramento City Council, recalled how difficult it was to explain to some Chinese residents about registering to vote, especially since the process is so different in their native countries.

"I see this making a huge difference," he said.

Foreign-language ballots are well used. Exit polling by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles County during 2008 found that 56 percent of Korean voters, 26 percent of Chinese voters, 28 percent of Filipino voters, and 53 percent of Vietnamese voters used language assistance.

Los Angeles County is mandated to print ballots in nine languages, including English, more than any other county in America. Sacramento County is now one of 43 jurisdictions mandated to print ballots in at least three separate languages.

Requirements to print the ballots elicit some dissent. When Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act five years ago, about 40 percent of the U.S. House backed an amendment that would have sharply curtailed ballots in foreign languages.

"What unites us? It's our language, the English language," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, said at the time. The act is "hurting America by making it easier not to learn English."

Chin, the former City Council candidate, takes a different view: "Anything you can do to get more people to vote, the better," he said.

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