Picture a polling place with separate voting booths for English-, Spanish-, Vietnamese-, Chinese-, Japanese- and Tagalog-speaking voters.

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Charles Weissburd can't.

"We just don't have the money or the wherewithal to do that," said the county's top election official.

For that reason, Weissburd--without waiting for President Bush to sign pending revisions to the 1965 Voting Rights Act--has already fashioned an agreement with local Latino and Asian-American activist groups to improve language assistance to voters without a fivefold increase in voting booths.

Meanwhile, in San Diego County, where the language aid law would mandate assistance in Spanish, Registrar Conny McCormack says she will wait for guidance from the California secretary of state's office before deciding how to proceed.

"For almost 10 years, we've (voluntarily) offered a generic sample ballot in Spanish," she said. "But we routinely get less than 50 requests in each election."

The federal legislation, approved by the Senate last Friday, would require counties to supply voting materials for Latino, Asian-American, American Indian and Alaskan minority groups that number 10,000 or more, share a common language, speak little or no English and have a literacy rate below the national average. The bill is expected to be signed into law in the next two weeks.

Proponents say it will help bring more ethnic voters to the polls. Opponents say there is no proof of that and contend that it will reduce incentives for minorities to learn English and join the mainstream of American life.

Both sides, however, agree on one thing: Nowhere will the law have more dramatic repercussions than in pluralistic Southern California.

Under its provisions, Los Angeles would be the only county in the nation required to print voting materials in six different languages. Orange County, meanwhile, would be one of only a handful across America mandated to provide trilingual assistance--in Spanish, Vietnamese and English.

All six of California's southernmost counties--Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Imperial included--would be required to provide voting materials in Spanish.

In recent years, Imperial has been the only Southern California county required to provide ballots in any language other than English. Under provisions of the current bill, sponsors say, ballots in virtually all bilingual counties will eventually be printed in both English and Spanish.