Voting Rights Campaign Pushes for Reform at Ohio Field Hearing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Kristen Voorhees, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, [email protected], 202.548.7166
Kelly Brewington, All Voting is Local, [email protected], 202.548.7159

CLEVELAND – Mike Brickner, Ohio state director of All Voting is Local, a collaborative campaign housed at The Leadership Conference Education Fund, will testify before the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Elections today during its “Voting Rights and Election Administration in Ohio” field hearing. In his testimony, Brickner emphasizes efforts to undercut voting rights in Ohio and urges policy makers to protect equal access to the ballot box.

“As a state and as a nation, we must fight to eliminate needless and discriminatory barriers to voting to ensure a democracy that works for us all,” Brickner says in his testimony. “Ohio must do better to ensure elections are administered freely and fairly, so that all voices are heard.”

Brickner’s testimony details the needless barriers to the ballot that keep Ohioans from having their voices heard. Curtailing early voting, polling place closures and moves, high rejection rates of provisional ballots, discriminatory voter purges, and denying voting rights to jailed citizens – these policies silence our most vulnerable communities and weaken our democracy. Brickner proposes concrete policy recommendations to tackle these problems, including expanding early voting sites, requiring voter registration and absentee voting in jails, implementing automatic voter registration, and expanding voting hours.

His full testimony can be found here.

A live stream of the hearing is available here.

The Leadership Conference Education Fund builds public will for federal policies that promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. The Education Fund’s campaigns empower and mobilize advocates around the country to push for progressive change in the United States. It was founded in 1969 as the education and research arm of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. For more information on The Education Fund, visit http://leadershipconferenceedfund.org/.

All Voting is Local fights for the right to vote through a unique combination of data-driven organizing, advocacy and communications. It is a collaborative campaign housed at The Leadership Conference Education Fund, in conjunction with Access Democracy; the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation; the American Constitution Society; the Campaign Legal Center; and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. For more information, visit allvotingislocal.org.