Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
People who don't speak English will find it difficult to follow American politics.
There is still truth to this (especially for immigrants who speak less-spoken languages), but there are perhaps more complexities than you are aware of. Notably, there are two major Spanish-language television networks, Telemundo and Univision, that have presences both over the air and on television cable services. In theory, all of the services of government at all levels are accessible in any of a dozen-ish of the more-common languages. E.g., common government paperwork can be had in Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, etc. In any court appearance, translators can be summoned at no charge to the citizen. Printed or electronic ballots are available in all of that large group of languages. Someone requesting a ballot in Swedish or Romansch would doubtless be out of luck, and I'm sure that coverage of the greater-spoken languages is better, but the point is the United States makes a creditable effort to respect there being no official language, though I'm sure there remains English-language biases invisible to yr. present correspondent. (I've never studied Spanish formally, but found when I was in Spain with British friends that I naturally absorbed a great deal of Spanish passively as a Californian while the Brits stood around puzzled by even words like 'calle' (street). It was an amusing realisation.) It is also doubtless that Spanish/English bilateral outreach is decidedly better here in California than in, say, Oklahoma or Arkansas.