For Election Day 2015, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. (LDF) continues its annual “Prepared to Vote” public education campaign, designed to empower voters. LDF attorneys will be on the ground in Houston and in Waller County, Texas to ensure that voters in those counties are equipped with information, including the parameters of Texas’s stringent voter ID requirement, which, despite LDF’s consistent wins against that law, remains enforceable.
In addition to the Election Day monitoring and voter education in Texas, LDF will distribute voter information and voter rights materials for Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana and Texas. LDF works in conjunction with partners on the ground in each of these states. “Prepared to Vote” materials explain Texas’s and South Carolina’s confusing and onerous photo ID laws and Alabama’s recent changes to access to such IDs.
“Strict voter ID requirements and other hurdles to voting have a disenfranchising effect, especially on communities of color. We work to minimize that impact by arming voters with information and knowledge of their rights,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, LDF President and Director-Counsel. “From advocating for equal access to voting, to engaging voters as they prepare to vote, to litigating voting rights all the way to the Supreme Court, LDF seeks to ensure full political participation for all voters.”
“Empowering and preparing voters Election Day is important for every election—not just for large presidential election years,” said Natasha Korgaonkar, LDF Assistant Counsel. “Our voter education and outreach work continues LDF’s decades-long history in ensuring access to the polls. Our team travels to the states in which we litigate every year to ensure that communities that we served are ready for Election Day.”
The goal of LDF’s seven-year-old “Prepared to Vote” program is to raise Black voters’ knowledge of important voting-related rights and ensure that voters arrive at the polls equipped to overcome the many obstacles in the electoral process that could affect their ability to cast a ballot on Election Day. Inspired by the Freedom School Model of the Civil Rights Movement, LDF’s “Prepared to Vote” program seeks to empower communities of color by providing essential information leading up to Election Day. Over the history of the program, LDF has focused on states where the state legislature or other officials recently adopted discriminatory voting measures that are more likely to harm Black voters; where LDF anticipates a hotly contested election along racial lines; and where LDF has had historic or recent involvement in litigation or policy designed to fulfill the promise of equal voting rights for Black and other voters of color.
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The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is not a part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) although LDF was founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. Since 1957, LDF has been a completely separate organization. Please refer to us in all media attributions as the “NAACP Legal Defense Fund” or “LDF”.
