05 Mar 2012 Occupy Occupy D.C.: Voting Rights at Top of Week 4 Agenda
Sandwiched in between the Russian election (and its alleged corruption) and our own “Super Tuesday” presidential primaries, the National Center’s “Occupy Occupy D.C.” street team returns on Monday for its fourth week at Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza.
Today’s message: free and fair elections depend on a balloting process that people can trust.
And instituting voter ID rules — against the wishes of the Obama Administration and the liberal political establishment — is exactly the way to protect the integrity of the electoral process.
Join the team at Freedom Plaza (13th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW) during the eleven o’clock hour — regardless of the weather — to demand an end to challenges to usurp newly-enacted state laws meant to ensure that every ballot counts. The Holder Justice Department is using the Voting Rights Act to dispute new voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina — and may challenge more in the coming year.
Members of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network are speaking out frequently and strongly in favor of strong voter ID rules. Project 21 spokeswoman Cherylyn Harley LeBon, a former senior counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, said:
In the past several years, states have increasingly focused on measures to protect the vote. After years of the federal government loosening voting regulations through such measures as the “motor voter” law and Help America Vote Act, the focus went back to the state level. The best example of this trend is with recent state-enacted voter ID laws.
Voting is our constitutional right. It includes the right not to have legal votes diluted by fraudulent votes. It should not be too much to ask for citizens to exert a minimal amount of effort to protect the integrity of the electoral process.