Sadly, voter ID laws are just one way Republicans across the country are working to undermine the fundamental voting rights of Americans. From GOP efforts to purge rightful voters from voting rolls, to Republican election administrators who inconsistently administer election laws, use unreliable voting machines, and fail to adequately train poll workers, our fundamental voting rights are under assault. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and Donna Brazile, chair of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute, today issued the following statement:

"While the Do-Nothing Republican Congress has failed to keep the American people safe, implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations, or provide comprehensive immigration reform, they managed to find time to pass a harmful voter ID law that will disenfranchise countless American citizens. By passing a bill that will effectively impose a poll tax on thousands of lawfully registered seniors, students, minorities, people with disabilities and low income voters, Washington Republicans have once again put the interests of their party ahead of the interests of the country.

"Our democracy rests on the simple idea that every American has the right to vote and have confidence that their ballot will be counted. Republicans in Washington claim to support that right, yet they are pushing this shameful, discriminatory bill and refuse to take common sense steps to ensure public confidence in our election systems. If Republicans in Congress were serious about voting rights, they would stop short-changing the Help America Voter Act by $800 million, pass the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, and adopt the emergency legislation proposed this week by Senate Democrats to reimburse states for backing up electronic voting machines with paper ballots in this year's elections.

"Democrats are working to restore confidence in our elections. It's time for Republicans to end their hypocrisy on voting rights and join us in standing up for our democracy."

The following are key elements of the national Democratic voter protection strategy for 2006:

NATIONAL VOTER PROTECTION HOTLINE: The DNC established the national 1-888-DEM-VOTE hotline so voters all across the country can get information about how and where to vote and to report problems at the polls on Election Day;

PROVIDING ELECTION PROTECTION STAFF: National Democrats will place election protection staff in 18 key states and provide training and step-by-step Election Protection manuals to other states.

RECRUITING LEGAL ASSISTANCE ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY: The National Lawyers Council is recruiting 7,500 pro-bono lawyers and law students to support the DNC's election protection program. These lawyers will be placed in precincts to augment voter protection efforts at every level-including not just statewide office and Congressional races, but local and county races as well. These offices from state representatives to county sheriffs and judges will have a profound impact on the lives of real citizens throughout the year.

ADVANCING LEGISLATION FOR VERIFIED VOTING: The DNC will continue working with Congressional leaders, grassroots activists and state parties to build support for federal legislation to mandate a verified voting paper trail for voting machines that has been proven as the best method of securing votes.

FILING LITIGATION TO BLOCK LEGISLATION: The DNC will work with state parties to file litigation to prevent imposition of egregious photo ID and other Republican sponsored legislation that disenfranchise voters. This follows the successful partnership the DNC has undertaken with state parties pursuing legal challenges to, for example, Indiana's voter ID law and to the effort to investigate the criminal phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire.

MONITORING STATE LEGISLATION: The National Lawyers Council and the Voting Rights Institute will continue to meet with top election law attorneys and monitor state legislative initiatives that have the potential to dilute the voting rights of key constituency voters. They are also updating manuals from the last election cycle to reflect new changes in election laws across the country.

DNC Voting Rights Institute
http://www.democrats.org/vri

DC Democratic Lawyers Council
http://www.dcdlc.org

New York Democratic Lawyers Council
http://www.nydlc.org

Texas Democratic Lawyers Council
http://www.txdlc.org

National Democratic Law Student Council
http://www.lawschooldems.org

“This weekend, our nation marked the 41st Anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act, which was recently reauthorized as the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act. Forty-one years after its original passage, this historic legislation has been preserved to protect the next generation of American voters from discrimination at the voting booth.

"Unfortunately the threat to equal voting rights remains. From partisan redistricting to restrictive voter ID regulations, to the vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines, to attempts by Congressional Republicans to water down the VRA with amendments only a few weeks ago, the assault on voting rights continues today. That is why it is not enough simply to sign this legislation. As a nation we must redouble our commitment to ensuring that its promise is realized for all Americans.

"Voting is a fundamental right in our democracy, and a predicate to all other rights Americans hold dear. In order to truly honor the Voting Rights Act we must work everyday to ensure that all legally eligible voters have the right to vote and to have that vote counted."

The Democratic National Committee’s Voting Rights Institute:

The DNC, through its Voting Rights Institute, has announced expanded efforts for national voter protection. These will include a national voter protection hotline, election protection staff in 15 key states and a series of efforts designed to help Americans register to vote and find out where to cast their ballots.

In addition to the national voter protection hotline, the DNC's voter protection strategy for 2006 includes:

• COORDINATING NATIONAL ELECTION PROTECTION STRATEGY: At the DNC's Summer Meeting in Chicago, the DNC Voting Rights Institute and the National Lawyers Council will meet with the leadership of every state party to lay out their step by step plans for protecting voters at the polls at every level;

• PROVIDING ELECTION PROTECTION STAFF: The DNC will place election protection staff in 15 key states and provide training and step-by-step Election Protection manuals to other states.

• RECRUITING LEGAL ASSISTANCE ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY: The National Lawyers Council is recruiting 7,500 pro-bono lawyers and law students to support the DNC's election protection program. These lawyers will be placed in precincts to augment voter protection efforts at every level-including not just statewide office and Congressional races, but local and county races as well. These offices from state representatives to county sheriffs and judges will have a profound impact on the lives of real citizens throughout the year.

• ADVANCING LEGISLATION FOR VERIFIED VOTING: The DNC will continue working with Congressional leaders, grassroots activists and state parties to build support for federal legislation to mandate a verified voting paper trail for voting machines that has been proven as the best method of securing votes.

• FILING LITIGATION TO BLOCK LEGISLATION: The DNC will work with state parties to file litigation to prevent imposition of egregious photo ID and other Republican sponsored legislation that disenfranchise voters. This follows the successful partnership the DNC has undertaken with state parties pursuing legal challenges to, for example, Indiana's voter ID law and to the effort to investigate the criminal phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire.

• MONITORING STATE LEGISLATION: The National Lawyers Council and the Voting Rights Institute will continue to meet with top election law attorneys and monitor state legislative initiatives that have the potential to dilute the voting rights of key constituency voters. They are also updating manuals from the last election cycle to reflect new changes in election laws across the country.

These voter protection initiatives are part of Governor Dean's unprecedented investment in Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts for the 2006 elections. Under his leadership, the DNC has committed $12 million to help elect Democrats at every level in 38 states across America--roughly 10 times the hard money the DNC spent four years ago for coordinated campaigns.

The DNC's new national hotline, 1-888-DEM-VOTE, builds on the tremendous success of the toll-free number established in March 2006 by the DNC Voting Rights Institute to provide information about how and where displaced New Orleans residents could vote and to help Indiana voters disenfranchised by the Republican voter ID law passed by Indiana Republicans. It will provide critical assistance to voters all across the country, including in key electoral targets and in states facing Republican challenges to the right to vote by providing poll location information, assistance in applying for absentee ballots, and help reporting voting problems before, during, and after Election Day.

Across America, voters have confronted a dizzying array of Republican-led challenges to the right to vote. These include discriminatory voter ID laws in states like Indiana, Georgia, Ohio and Missouri; irresponsible voter registration rules in Ohio and Florida; inappropriate purges of voter lists in states like Indiana and Florida; the use of faulty election machines and inadequate machine maintenance that fail to protect the integrity of the vote; a criminal phone jamming scheme in New Hampshire; and discrepancies in election day practices that disproportionately effect rural, elderly, poor, minority, and student voters.

"For Republicans, nothing is more important than their partisan interests, not even the American people's most cherished right to vote and have that vote counted," said DNC Chairman Howard Dean. "The list of tools that Republicans are using to enhance their electoral prospects at the expense of our right to vote reads like shameful litany from past eras: discriminatory voter ID laws; restricting access to voter registration; improper attempts to purge voter lists; the use of voting machines that leave no verifiable audit trails; criminal phone jamming schemes; and inconsistently administered elections.

"Democrats believe that the more people who vote, the better it is for our country. That is why we are working hard every single day to protect the right of the American people to participate in our democracy, and why we have committed unprecedented resources to the effort to get out the vote in this year's elections. Our national voter protection hotline, 1-888-DEM-VOTE, is the latest in our ongoing effort to ensure that every American can vote with confidence this November."

In addition to the national voter protection hotline, the DNC's voter protection strategy for 2006 includes:

• COORDINATING NATIONAL ELECTION PROTECTION STRATEGY: At the DNC's Summer Meeting in Chicago, the DNC Voting Rights Institute and the National Lawyers Council will meet with the leadership of every state party to lay out their step by step plans for protecting voters at the polls at every level;
  
  
• PROVIDING ELECTION PROTECTION STAFF: The DNC will place election protection staff in 15 key states and provide training and step-by-step Election Protection manuals to other states.
  
  
• RECRUITING LEGAL ASSISTANCE ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY: The National Lawyers Council is recruiting 7,500 pro-bono lawyers and law students to support the DNC's election protection program. These lawyers will be placed in precincts to augment voter protection efforts at every level-including not just statewide office and Congressional races, but local and county races as well. These offices from state representatives to county sheriffs and judges will have a profound impact on the lives of real citizens throughout the year.
  
  
• ADVANCING LEGISLATION FOR VERIFIED VOTING: The DNC will continue working with Congressional leaders, grassroots activists and state parties to build support for federal legislation to mandate a verified voting paper trail for voting machines that has been proven as the best method of securing votes.
  
  
• FILING LITIGATION TO BLOCK LEGISLATION: The DNC will work with state parties to file litigation to prevent imposition of egregious photo ID and other Republican sponsored legislation that disenfranchise voters. This follows the successful partnership the DNC has undertaken with state parties pursuing legal challenges to, for example, Indiana's voter ID law and to the effort to investigate the criminal phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire.
  
  
• MONITORING STATE LEGISLATION: The National Lawyers Council and the Voting Rights Institute will continue to meet with top election law attorneys and monitor state legislative initiatives that have the potential to dilute the voting rights of key constituency voters. They are also updating manuals from the last election cycle to reflect new changes in election laws across the country.

On today's agenda a dicussion of the following topics:

• The proliferation of Photo ID legislation at the state and national levels
• The purging of millions of voters through new HAVA statewide database requirements
• Voting machines and voter verification challenges

Voting ensures every American an opportunity to participate in our democracy. We should never impose obstacles to voting without a fair and compelling reason for doing so that actually enhances our democracy.

Yet, across the nation, Republicans have launched a campaign to impose extremely restrictive voter identification requirements. While they say they are seeking to prevent voter fraud, nothing could be further from the truth.

In Indiana, they passed a law that is virtually identical to one struck down by a federal district court in Georgia. In fact, Democratic governors in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania vetoed similar legislation.

We are committed to fighting these and other Republican efforts to suppress voter turnout anywhere and everywhere Republicans propose them.

Republicans believe that it is better for them if fewer people vote. Democrats understand that America is better when as many people as possible can vote.

So the DNC is stepping up to help fight GOP efforts across the country.

We are expanding the work of the Voting Rights Institute to promote efforts aimed at protecting the right of every American to cast their ballot and have their ballot counted.

We formed the National Lawyers Council to fight systematic barriers to registration and voting across the country, and through the NLC we are providing legal assistance to the Indiana Democratic Party's appeal of a federal court ruling upholding that state's radical voter ID law.

The Voting Rights Institute established a toll free number to help displaced New Orleans residents vote in the April 22 primaries and to collect information about Indiana voters who were disenfranchised by the voter ID law.

I know you have done important work here in New York through the NY Democratic Lawyers Council.

You did important work in monitoring the 2005 mayoral race in New York City and local races in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland and Ulster Counties.

You dispatched a team of lawyers to conduct election monitoring for New Orleans mayoral primary and other local races.

You worked on the Board of Elections regulations for voting machines, and you have been working with the New York State Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the DCCC to work on election monitoring in key races 2006 so we can take back Congress and take back the NY Senate

I applaud you and thank you for those efforts.

The work you do matters, we know, for example, that voters in Ohio in 2004 were disenfranchised by a faulty election system. If you were an African American you waited an average of 52 minutes to vote. If you were white, you waited an average of 18 minutes. If you were young and African American you were more likely to be asked to provide photo ID, in violation of Ohio law.

We know that there are real people, real legitimately registered voters in Indiana who were disenfranchised by the Indiana Voter ID law during the primaries there earlier this month. For example:

• The newlywed couple from Marion County who were both registered voters had gotten married since they last voted in 2004. The husband was allowed to vote but the wife was not because her name changed and it did not match her photo ID.
• Or the married woman from Vanderburgh County who was driven by her husband (she does not drive) to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get an ID presented her social security card, her medical card, even her voting card, but she was denied a photo ID because she did not have a birth certificate.
• Or the Postal employee wearing her full uniform who could not vote because election workers deemed her U.S.-government-issued employment identification to be an unacceptable form of identification because it did not have an expiration date.

These are real people who were denied their right to vote. If even one legitimate voter is denied their right to vote, than these laws need to be overturned or blocked.

That is why Democrats will continue to fight unfair Voter ID laws and other efforts to prevent lawfully registered voters, in particular, seniors, young people, minorities and low-income citizens from casting their ballots.

The amazing thing about this organization is that it brings together lawyers from a variety of fields of practice. They are united by their committment to the Democratic Party and their passion for upholding the law. More than anything I was surprised by the variety of people in attendance - some were seasoned professionals and some were young associates. They were all passionate.

A mother who wore a button that read "John McCain Doesn't Speak For Me," expressed her outrage over having to sit through graduation exercises and listen to John McCain last weekend as her daughter graduated, and this weekend, John Roberts, at her son's law school commencement. "It's a knife through the heart of a progressive mother," she told me.

A recent law school graduate dished on what it was really like to be a 1st year associate, but went on to say she was glad she could be a part of the NYDLC and work to make sure voting rights are protected.

A seasoned lawyer told me about his experience as part of the election protection team in Florida during the 2004 election and how he had to be part of the effort after watching what happened in 2000.

The bottom line is that groups like these demonstrate the power each person has to make a difference by bringing their particular skills and talents to the table for Democracy.

The New York Democratic Lawyers Concil, a chapter of the National Democratic Lawyers Council, is a statewide coalition of volunteer lawyers and law students committed to a simple yet fundamental proposition: that among the best ways to protect and promote a strong democracy is to protect and promote an accessible, open and fair election process.

Building on the tremendous election protection effort of 2004, the NYDLC/NLC will work closely with the Party at the national, state and local levels to promote voting rights and to identify and combat problems that undermine, either directly or indirectly, those rights. While the Council will work with the Party on other issues, its foremost objective is to organize early in every state and territory to carry out the Democratic Party’s commitment to this goal.

This past weekend, from March 17-19, 2006, Democratic law students from across the country convened at Harvard Law School to kickoff a new association of Democratic law students, the National Democratic Law Students Council (NDLSC). Headlined by the DNC Chairman, Gov. Howard Dean, the convention brought together 140 students from 33 schools with a common purpose: to forge a new organization devoted to promoting the work that law school Democrats and Democratic groups do on campus while connecting them with the voter protection and other efforts of Democratic lawyers.

Delegates of varied backgrounds from as far away as Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, and California came together at this inaugural event, attending a series of panels, talks, and trainings relating to the intersection between law and politics, and electing national officers to move the new organization into the next year. David Burd and Russell Anello, third-year and second-year students at Harvard Law School, respectively, led the organizational effort.

The founding of the NDLSC can trace its origins to two trends. First, law students have historically fallen within the College Democrats of America, but though the College Democrats have thrived in recent years, its focus on college students has often left Democratic law student groups somewhat on their own from year to year, ebbing and flowing in strength based on the election cycle. Also, the need for an organization like this became increasingly clear in the wake of the 2000 and 2004 elections, as voter protection work has taken on a new importance.

After the 2004 election, a group of Democratic lawyers created the National Lawyers Council (NLC), which was brought in house at the DNC in the spring of 2005. Starting late that summer and into the fall, after meeting with Anna Martinez, the Executive Director of the NLC, who was looking to engage law students more systematically in the NLC, David Burd began what became a seven month journey culminating at the Convention this weekend to create the NDLSC. As of now, the group encompasses Democratic law students and law student clubs at over 65 law schools nationwide.

The Convention itself was a great success and bodes well for the future of the NDLSC. The group held elections for national officers, who will serve from 2006-2007 and build upon the growth of this past year. Sarah Resnick, from Cardozo Law School, became the group’s first President. Matt Bailey, from Oklahoma City University School of Law, was elected Vice President of Membership and Communications. Danny Frost, of Columbia Law School, won the position of Vice President of Campaigns & Elections. Will Conroy, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia, won the Vice Presidency of Campus Organizing. Andrew Bruck, of Stanford Law School, was elected the group’s treasurer. The candidates ran on innovative platforms, presenting new fundraising and structural ideas to the assembled law students. The candidates’ energy and initiative means a bright future for the NDLSC’s place within the Democratic infrastructure, as a result, for Democratic electoral prospects.