Ramaswamy reiterates the call for voting only in English

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican tech entrepreneur running a protracted campaign for president, doubled down on Friday on his pledge to tighten voting laws if elected.

In his remarks in Ames, Iowa, he reiterated his pledge to make English the sole voting language. The language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act prohibits such ballots in English in many cases. His promise, which he has often emphasized in the past monthsis one of several voting reforms that have become popular among Republican voters and that he has taken advantage of.

“One thing I will work with Congress on is a minimum federal standard for our federal elections,” he told voters Friday. That standard includes “one-day voting on Election Day, as a national holiday with paper ballots, a government-issued voter ID that matches the voter file, and yes, English as the only language appearing on a ballot.”

Mr. Ramaswamy, who is polls far behind his Republican rivals in fourth-place Iowa have long advocated extraordinary rollbacks of voting rights in other ways as well. Early in his campaign, he attracted attention by calling for Americans under the age of 25 not to vote unless they pass the citizenship test required of immigrants seeking citizenship, or unless they serve in the U.S. military or as a first responder serve.

He said over the summer that if he had been in former Vice President Mike Pence’s position on January 6, 2021, he would have predicted Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. would not have confirmed until Congress agreed to make major changes to the electoral system.

“In my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have implemented that level of reform and then certified the election results on that condition,” he said. told NBC News in August.

Mr Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, has also pushed for English to become the national language in the country.

Leah McBride Mensching reporting contributed.