Civil Rights Organizations Launch Educational Effort to Combat Voter Suppression

Washington, DC – Today, the Campaign Legal Center, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL), and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) held a press conference call to launch a national online voter education effort focused on seven battleground states – Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, and Nevada.  The effort to dispel myths about voter eligibility includes a blog ad that will run through Election Day and targeted op-eds in community newspapers. 

The blog ad targets voters most affected by intimidation and suppression tactics, including communities of color, low-income communities and young people, in key states where voters are being misled or intimidated. 

“Americans have long known that if you don’t vote, you don’t count,” said Wade Henderson, LCCR President and CEO.  “There is no doubt that this year’s election will draw an unprecedented number of new voters, and with that, we’re seeing more voter suppression efforts, and more sophisticated tactics than ever,” Henderson said.

Though voter suppression is certainly not a new issue, this historic election year has brought heightened efforts to disenfranchise and intimidate voters. Among some of the tactics are legal challenges to valid registered voters; threatening notes indicating that unpaid bills or outstanding parking tickets will thwart the recipient’s right to vote and may even result in arrest; and mass attempts to confuse voters through robocalls, official-looking websites with incorrect information, and misleading emails. 

Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections, the voting rights project for LCCRUL, highlighted some of his group’s Election Protection efforts, including the hotline 866-OUR-VOTE, live online chats, and use of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to reach young voters. 

Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, emphasized cases he has seen of voter disenfranchisement, such as “no match, no vote” cases in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida, voter purges in Michigan and Georgia, and barriers to student voting in Virginia.

The groups condemned this dissemination of misinformation as a ploy to keep eligible voters away from the polls, and urged concerned citizens to empower themselves by ensuring they know what they need to know to cast a ballot on Election Day. 

LCCR and nearly 20 other organizations also sent letters to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the National Association of Secretaries of State voicing their concerns about voter suppression.