Democracy Should Not Be This Hard
America's 2014 midterm had the lowest voter turnout in more than 70 years. It was also the first general election since the Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights released its 2014 Election Protection Report today, about which executive director Barbara Arnwine (above), says her immediate reaction was "democracy continues to be too hard for many voters." The Lawyers' Committee saw a 45 percent increase in calls to its election assistance hotline from the '10 to '14 midterms, reaching more than 43,000.
The Lawyers' Committee was founded by a call to action from JFK and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. (Above, singer Estelle pulled Chicago Lawyers' Committee exec director Jay Readey on stage for a dance during one celebratory event at the US Institute of Peace.) The 2014 report shows that in Texas, 13 percent of problems reported concerned the strict voter ID requirement. In Georgia — where nearly 40,000 eligible voters were "inexplicably left off the state's voter rolls" — almost 57 percent of problems reported were with registration. The highest call volumes came from CA, TX, FL, GA and NY.
