Constitutional Law

Coalition Fields Vast Team To Help Voters

The Election Protection Coalition is hoping for a smooth day at the nation’s polls, but prepared to do battle in areas where would-be voters confront obstacles. The coalition of more than 100 state and national organizations is intent on preventing Election Day debacles such as those that transpired in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, Joanna McCarthy reported for Legal Times. Elizabeth Westfall, a senior attorney with one of the coalition’s members, the Advancement Project, is one of an “army” of attorneys ready to help out voters nationwide. Westfall and the scores of other election-protection attorneys “will field a projected 200,000 calls on a nationwide hot line from 32 call centers, mostly staffed by lawyers volunteers and located at 40 private law firms,” McCarthy reported.

The Election Protection Project is also hosting a Web site, OurVoteLive.org, where voting obstacles can be reported in real-time and responded to by the Coalition’s members. At the moment there are already more than 20,000 reports entered on the Web site, which also includes a hotline number, 866-OUR-Vote, for voters to call for assistance from Coalition members.  As reported yesterday on the ACSBlog, Ohio State University’s Election Law @ Moritz is also reporting on obstacles to voting on Election Day.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on November 04, 2008 (boomark / email).