When renewal of the Voting Rights Act comes up for a vote in the U.S. House, as early as this week, it is imperative that reasonable members of Congress stand tough against any effort to water down the landmark law.

One specific target of interest to Hawai'i is a proposal from some conservative Republicans to do away with provisions requiring bilingual ballots and other materials in jurisdictions with substantial numbers of non-English speaking citizens.

That's the wrong approach.

The importance of this fundamental right to vote demands that citizens casting their ballots be as informed and as educated about their choices as possible. And for the many Americans for whom English is not a primary language, having these ballots and materials available in a language they can best understand enables them to vote in a more meaningful way.

Hawai'i Congressmen Neil Abercrombie and Ed Case must use their influence and home-state perspective to see that the provisions requiring bilingual ballots and materials are preserved.

Those pushing repeal of the foreign-language requirement point out that an individual must show proficiency in English to become a citizen, so why should voting materials be made available in other languages?

This misses the point. The English requirement for citizenship falls far short of the proficiency needed to sort through confusing voting materials and ballots that are a challenge even to native English speakers.

In addition, the English proficiency citizenship requirements can be waived for older residents. And there are some native-born Americans who are not comfortable with English.

In Hawai'i, ballots and other materials are available in Ilocano, Japanese and Chinese. With our dismally low voter-turnout record, it is imperative that we do everything we can to get people to the polls to participate in this democratic process.

We already have rules guaranteeing the right to vote for citizens who might have a handicap; we make special provisions for these people.

So the idea that a citizen of the United States would be discouraged from going to the polls because the language used at the polls is beyond their comprehension makes no sense.

The English-only proposal must be rejected.