Civil rights groups launch Voter Protection Program

17th October 2016   ·   0 Comments

By Zenitha Prince
Contributing Writer

(Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper) — Against a backdrop of changing voting laws, incendiary campaign rhetoric and diminished federal election oversight, efforts by civil rights and civic engagement groups to protect the rights of voters are more important than ever, activists said last week.

A coalition of more than 100 organizations, led by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, officially launched its Election Protection initiative Oct. 4, noting the treacherous political and legal landscape many Americans will have to traverse on their way to the polls this election season.

“Based on what we observed during the primary season, we anticipate a greater number of calls than we have ever received, relative to prior presidential election seasons,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, during a press call.

The Election Protection hotline, a multi-lingual resource where voters can call and ask for voter registration and polling information and log complaints, has received more than 30,000 calls so far and, by the end of the election season, is expected to hear from 250,000 to 300,000 voters.

The volume of calls, the coalition leaders said, is being driven by legal and political factors that could impact access to the ballot box, particularly among voters of color. Among those factors, is the clarion call by untamed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, urging his overwhelmingly White supporters to gather at the polls in “certain areas”—read urban, predominantly non-white communities—to ensure things were “on the up and up,” civic engagement leaders said.

“We are very much aware of calls have been made by a presidential candidate to activate law enforcement and private, untrained individuals to watch and look for problems at polls in November,” said Clarke, adding that there is and has been little to no evidence that voter fraud exists. “We are concerned about the intimidating effect that this mass call for police officers and untrained individuals can have on minority voters.”

And there are other legal concerns.

“This is the first presidential election cycle we’ve conducted in more than 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act in place,” said Clarke. She added, “Congress went into recess last week without taking action to restore the Voting Rights Act, and [it] did this despite clear evidence that voter discrimination and voter suppression is alive and well across the country.”

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which called for federal clearance of election law changes in jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination, was gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, in which the high court called on Congress to recalibrate the formula used to determine the jurisdictions that would fall under federal oversight.

“Voter protections were basically sacrificed” by the decision, said Mee Moua, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

The ruling prompted several states to race forward with new laws that made voting more difficult, such as fewer early voting days and stricter voter identification rules. The changes—and the legal back-and-forth that followed, including successful challenges to the laws—will be a source of great confusion for voters, the coalition said.

“[For example,] we estimated that 875,000 Latino adult U.S. citizens are at the risk of being prevented from voting because of the changes in laws and procedures in the 19 states that enacted restrictive voting changes since 2012,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund about a study released earlier this year.

Those challenges were most likely to present themselves in Texas, whose restrictive voter ID law—the most stringent in the country—has since been overturned by an appeals court ruling; and in North Carolina, who had passed one of the more far-reaching omnibus voter suppression law in the nation.

“Even where courts have ordered changes to the voter ID procedures, we are concerned that the quality of assistance to Latino voters with navigating the new and changing rules is insufficient,” Vargas added. “We’re concerned about the lack of adequate outreach to voters, which is why our Election Protection efforts this year are so critical.”

In addition to the fallout from the Shelby ruling, protecting American voters this year will be complicated by the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to terminate core components of its federal observer program, which was an “important safeguard,” particularly for voters of color, activists said. Under the program, the department would deploy specially trained personnel inside polling places in communities covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. And, without the program, voters in some communities will be more vulnerable.

Additionally, in states such as Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, the Election Protection team said they have noted voter suppression efforts at the state and local levels, including cutbacks in early voting hours and the elimination of polling places, resulting in long lines during the primaries. And, Clarke said, those efforts are likely to get worse.

“In the final week before an election, we historically tend to see efforts to make voting more difficult by way of 11th-hour polling site changes and purging of the voting rolls, among other actions,” she said.

In addition to its pre-election voter education outreach, Election Protection will be available to assist affected voters via its hotlines—1-888-OUR-VOTE (general), 1-888-VEY VOTA (for Latino voters) and 1-888-API-VOTE (for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders)—where trained legal volunteers and experts will be available to answer questions and otherwise address concerns.

Volunteers, who are trained in the laws of the specific state they are assigned to, will also be deployed into the field in 26 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

This article originally published in the October 17, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.