PRESS RELEASE Contact: [email protected]
For Immediate Release
Date: February 24, 2023
Washington, DC – Today, Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) in Wisconsin, Bradley Heard, deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Voting Rights Practice Group, Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, and Constance Boozer, chief of staff of the Defend Democracy Project joined a virtual press briefing hosted by Defend Democracy Project to discuss ongoing efforts by far-right MAGA Republicans to suppress the voices of voters across the country, and recent positive moves in key states to protect our right to choose our own leaders.
Today’s call followed the release of Defend Democracy Project’s newest report, Voter Suppression: A Key Strategy in the MAGA Playbook. While some states across the country are working harder than ever to defend our right to vote and have had successes, state legislatures in Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, and others have been working to enact laws that are increasingly making it more difficult for Americans to exercise their right to vote. The fight to protect democracy is not over yet.
“There has always been a challenge in this country to ensure that everyone has equal access to voting and to have their vote counted,” said Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket. “After the violence on January 6th, we saw state-after-state pass new voter suppression laws. We saw all of these Republican-controlled states try to eke-out the last remnants of a plan to win elections by having a minority of the vote share.”
“As we confront these dark times in our democracy, we need to have a year-round level of engagement. These are serious challenges that we need to overcome,” said Angela Lang, Executive Director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) in Wisconsin. “We need to make sure that we’re organizing. We see that these rules changes can confuse people. One year we had absentee dropboxes, the next they’re gone. We need to make sure we’re updating people as things change, and that is the duty of every community member.”
“I don’t need to remind anybody here about the effects of former President Trump and his fanatical supporters to spread conspiracy theories and misinformation about the 2020 election. But the harm of the conspiracy theories didn’t stop there,” said Bradley Heard, deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Voting Rights Practice Group. “Extremist politicians across the country have weaponized misinformation about elections and used it to build barriers to voters who might disagree with them, specifically people of color, disabled voters, and lower income voters.”
“One of the challenges to protecting voting rights right now is that there’s this idea going around that despite extremists’ efforts, the effect on voter turnout has been minimal. This is a dangerous assumption,” said Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO. “These restrictions put on voting by certain extremists are modern-day poll taxes. They are, in some ways, worse, because it is targeted and puts a higher price on voting for certain parts of the population.”
Watch the full briefing here.
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