Monday, October 6, 2008

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Launches Voter Awareness Initiative

PREPARED TO VOTE: Voter Protection 2008

August 6, 2008 NAACP Legal Defense Fund Unveils New Strategy to Protect Voting Rights this November (New York, NY)

Today the NAACP Legal Defenseand Educational Fund, (LDF), unveiled its new comprehensive non-partisan voter awareness program, "Prepared to Vote". "Prepared to Vote is a program designed to raise every voter's awareness of the many obstacles in the electoral process that could affect their right to vote in the 2008 election. Through Prepared to Vote we hope to ensure that every eligible voter casts a vote that counts," said John Payton, LDF President and Director-Counsel. Inspired by the Freedom School Model from the Civil Rights Movement, the Prepared to Vote Campaign seeks to empower communities of color by providing essential information prior to Election Day. Program components include community-based workshops, the dissemination of user-friendly materials, meetings with election officials, and a dynamic educational website preparedtovote.org.

The Prepared to Vote program will help reveal and address voting barriers, such as voter ID requirements, voter purges, faulty voter rolls, poorly trained elections officials, felon disfranchisement statutes and a host of other potential obstacles. With record voter participation anticipated in the upcoming Presidential Election, the Prepared to Vote Campaign will help protect the rights of voters and ensure that America's democratic processes are administered uniformly and fairly in communitiesof color. LDF is proud to continue its long tradition of protecting the rights of voters across the spectrumof American life. LDF will be deploying attorneys to 10 states to conduct field operations in an effort to prevent actsof omission that could result in disfranchisement reminiscent of the 2000 election.

The Prepared to Vote Program covers: Alabama, Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Maryland, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina.

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