advocate bar association

welcome i'm tom hicks chairman of the united states election assistance commission and we're here to discuss a series of episodes on things that will be affecting the election. joining me today is marcia johnson blanco and would you like to describe a little bit about your organization and some of the things that you do.

so i'm with the lawyers committee for civil rights under law and we were founded in 1963 by president kennedy who called the private bar to the white house to help with the civil rights struggle that was happening at that time and from that conversation my organization was founded and here we are over 50 years later still fighting up on

a wide range of civil rights issues including voting. can you describe some of those things that your organization does to help voters. yes, so our voting rights project which i'm one of the co-directors works in three ways, we have programs such as the election protection program we also do litigation and then we also advocate for

changing our laws to improve our election system and voting rights. ok, so is there anything in particular that your organization is doing for the 2016 election cycle? yes so we lead the election protection coalition the nation's largest nonpartison voter protection coalition and we have a suite of hotlines out which

voters can call to ask questions or get help in the voting process the hotline at the lawyers committee administers advancing justice aajc and apia vote okay how how else can voters reach your organization well um i should say with the hotline we also have a field program where we're going to be on the ground on

election day at polling places providing assistance to voters and we also work with elections officials to make sure that voters get the help they need. so if voters have any questions or need help on election day they should call the 866 our-vote hotline and they can also reach my organization by calling 202-662-8600 but on election

day they should call the hotline or they can go on the website for election protection which is 866ourvote.org and that has a lot of information for all 50 states on the elections process and they can get answers to their questions there as well ok want to thank you again for joining me for this episode on getting a voter

education issues out to our voters and i want to thank our audience again for being a part of our #beready 16 campaign and with that i want to say goodbye thank you thank you