Texas Pol to Asians: Make Names 'Easier for Americans'

A Republican Texas state legislator has drawn the ire of Democrats, and others, for suggesting Asian voters change their names to ones “easier for Americans to deal with,” the Houston Chronicle reports. The comments from Betty Brown came Tuesday, when the legislature heard testimony from a Chinese-American group on voting difficulties. Asian voters’ names often show up differently on different documents.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese,” Brown asked a representative from the group, “do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” A Democratic official called her comments “disrespectful,” but a rep for Brown said she was simply trying to solve an ID problem. It’s the Dems who “want this to just be about race,” he said. (More voting rights stories.)