Election Protection: Our Past Activities
Click on a link below to read more about our work.
Fighting Restrictive Voter Registration Rules in Ohio
Protecting the Vote in New Orleans
Helping Voters Cope with New Voting Machines in Pennsylvania
Tackling Restrictive ID and Registration Requirements in Arizona
Challenging Barriers to Voter Registration in Florida
Fighting Restrictive Voter Registration Rules in Ohio
In early June of 2006, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell effectively decimated or shut down voter registration efforts in Ohio when he enacted rules that severely restrict the operations of groups seeking to register traditionally disenfranchised voters. Recognizing the threat Blackwell’s regulations and interpretations of Ohio law posed to expanding the franchise in minority and low-income communities, PFAW Foundation’s Election Protection 365 legal, media, and field advocacy teams moved to action. PFAW Foundation organized two press conferences—one at the Columbus statehouse featuring People For the American Way Foundation, the League of Young Voters, the NAACP, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and the National Hip Hop Political Convention and one in Cleveland featuring members of PFAW Foundation’s African American Ministers Leadership Council—to highlight the effects of these rules and expose them as a blatant voter suppression tactic.
After the first press conference, Blackwell rescinded one rule that had prohibited voter registration workers from returning forms they collected by mail—but left several other egregious provisions intact. PFAW Foundation continued to advocate for overturning the remaining restrictions. Tens of thousands of activists across the country contacted the Ohio Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR), an Ohio legislative committee charged with reviewing rules promulgated by agencies, and Secretary of State Blackwell to protest the rules, and PFAW Foundation sent a letter to JCARR urging them to reject these rules. 
Despite the public outcry, JCARR decided at its June 26 meeting to accept Secretary of State Blackwell’s rules. In response, PFAW Foundation joined other civic organizations in filing a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the restrictions imposed by Blackwell and the Ohio statute. A motion for a preliminary injunction is now pending.
On September 1, PFAW Foundation hailed a court victory in Ohio, where U.S. District Judge Kathleen O’Malley issued a preliminary injunction against portions of Ohio’s new voter law and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s restrictive interpretations of that law.
PFAWF and the other nonprofit organizations that brought the suit argued that Blackwell’s rules were hobbling efforts to register new voters, especially in minority and low-income communities. The Reverend Tony Minor, whose Community of Faith Assembly church in East Cleveland was a plaintiff in the suit, expressed relief.
“The judge’s ruling today means that small churches without a lot of resources will still be able to reach into the community and sign up voters. That’s good for our community, and good for Ohio, said Minor, whose church registers voters through PFAW Foundation’s nonpartisan “Victory Through Voting project.
Elliot Mincberg, PFAW Foundation’s legal director, was optimistic: “We’re going to ramp up our nonpartisan voter registration efforts, and we hope this will clear the way for nonprofit groups as well, he said. “Democracy works best when more people can take part in the process. Today’s ruling is a victory for good government.
PFAW Foundation was plaintiff and co-counsel in the suit with Project Vote of Ohio, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Communities of Faith Assembly Church, Common Cause Ohio, and the American Association of People with Disabilities.
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Protecting the Vote in New Orleans
In the spring of 2006, New Orleans held unprecedented elections in which hundreds of thousands of voters faced daunting hurdles to casting votes that would count. Voters displaced by Hurricane Katrina—many of whom are African American—could not afford to return home to vote and often faced difficulty navigating complex absentee balloting procedures. To help displaced voters request and cast absentee ballots, PFAW Foundation supported the work of 15 Voter Assistance Centers that the NAACP opened in cities across the country with large numbers of evacuees. PFAW Foundation lawyers helped design materials and train staff; PFAW Foundation volunteers helped staff the Voter Assistance Centers; and PFAW Foundation reached out to evacuee voters to let them know their rights by placing radio ads and sending postcards to displaced New Orleanians whose whereabouts were known.
For the election days on April 22 and May 20, PFAW Foundation partnered with the Louisiana Voting Rights Network to organize a volunteer poll monitoring effort. Scores of volunteers and coalition lawyers went to polling places in historically disenfranchised communities to help voters exercise their right to vote. These volunteers helped voters identify their polling places (many of which had been moved), made sure voters without identification were able to cast ballots, worked with election officials to make sure voters were not turned away, and helped remove intimidating police presence from polling sites.
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Helping Voters Cope with New Voting Machines in Pennsylvania
 Watch a news clip featuring Celeste Taylor, PFAW's African American Outreach State Coordinator for Pennsylvania |
Allegheny County, PA, made a decision to shift to new electronic voting machines only five weeks before its May 16, 2006 primary, leaving insufficient time to adequately train poll workers and educate the community. Moreover, the machines the county chose had failed in other states (Florida, Ohio, and California, to name a few) on Election Day, and in 2002 the Inspector General in Miami found that these machines were not properly prepared; their results could not be audited; poll workers were unable to operate machines; and large numbers of voters simply gave up as a result.
People For the American Way filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop this last-minute shift to touchscreen machines for this election, but a district court judge rejected our request for the county not to use the machines for the primary.
In response, PFAW Foundation mobilized volunteers to go to targeted polling places on Election Day to distribute helpful materials about the new machines to voters as they entered the polls and to ask voters exiting the polls to fill out a brief survey about any problems they encountered. After the election, PFAW Foundation sent a detailed letter to the Allegheny County Board of Elections outlining the problems we had uncovered and partnered with other PA voting rights groups to hold a press conference highlighting these problems and making recommendations for improvements to be made before the general election in November. These efforts received extensive media coverage, including by the Associated Press, local TV news, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and National Public Radio. PFAW Foundation continues to advocate for reforms by meeting with Allegheny County elections officials and contacting the PA Department of State to get them to intervene.
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Tackling Restrictive ID and Registration Requirements in Arizona
In November 2004, Arizona voters passed Proposition 200, a state referendum that, among other things, requires individuals to produce proof of citizenship when registering to vote and to show identification before casting ballots at the polls.
This new law is but one example of new restrictive voter ID requirements that selectively disenfranchise certain segments of the population—those who do not have identification because they do not drive, go to school, or engage in activities under which they would be given other acceptable forms of identification. Obtaining an ID can be a hardship for many, especially the elderly and the poor. Moreover voter ID requirements do not improve the integrity of elections. The National Commission on Election Reform found that there is no evidence that the voter fraud which voter ID requirements purportedly seek to address is even prevalent in the U.S.
Arizona’s new ID requirements went into full effect for the first time during elections on March 14, 2006. To assess the effects of the new identification requirements, PFAW Foundation’s Election Protection 365 team and Democracia USA staff partnered with local groups to monitor six Phoenix polling places during a special city bond election. Staff and volunteers provided direct assistance to voters and collected exit surveys from voters about their experience with these new requirements.
After the election, PFAW Foundation joined a coalition in filing a federal lawsuit challenging Proposition 200’s identification and proof of citizenship requirements, on the grounds that they violate the 14th and 24th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and the National Voter Registration Act. Although the court declined to grant a temporary restraining order in the case, a motion for a preliminary injunction is now pending.
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Challenging Barriers to Voter Registration in Florida
In 2004, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood asserted that any registrant who failed to check a “citizenship box on his or her voter registration application should be rejected, even though the form also included a place where registrants signed to affirm their citizenship. Such minor, non-substantive errors on voter registration forms caused at least 14,000 otherwise eligible voters to not make it onto the rolls in 2004. PFAW Foundation jointly filed a lawsuit, Diaz v. Cobb, addressing this and similar requirements. Recently, the district court partially dismissed and partially upheld our claims, and discovery and other proceedings are continuing.
On top of this, in 2005, the Florida legislature enacted new laws severely restricting voter registration drives in the state. The new laws threaten ruinous fines on any non-partisan voter registration group that, for example, fails to submit a voter registration form to the Supervisor of Elections within 10 days of collection, for whatever reason, including hurricanes and floods. Notably, political parties are exempt. PFAW Foundation has developed a training for non-profits wishing to continue voter registration efforts and staff has gone around the state giving the training, which both explains the law and provides suggestions for how to comply with it. Democracia USA, a PFAW Foundation program that registers Hispanic voters, continues to operate in the state and serves as a model for how to impose rigorous quality control procedures to comply with the law. Coalition partners have also brought a lawsuit challenging the legality of these restrictive provisions and seeking to have them overturned.
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