Sep 6, 2021
The current assault on voting rights in America is both predictable and shocking. We saw it in full force during the 2020 presidential election when then President Trump’s appointee Postmaster General Louis DeJoy stripped mailboxes and “lost” ballots in targeted areas. Right now, state legislatures are devising new maneuvers to subvert the ability to vote by people of color. They include almost insurmountable barriers to the ballot box, from requiring copies of ID with requests for a mail-in ballot to banning the distribution of food and water for weary voters at voting sites. National nonprofits are rising to this historic occasion, challenging these punitive measures in courts and advocating for passage in the US Senate of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And new strategies are evolving and operationalizing. Leigh Chapman, a lawyer who has been on the frontlines of these legal challenges and national campaigns, now goes deeper as the executive director of Deliver My Vote. Leigh breaks down this hyper local strategy for educating and mobilizing voters who are most at risk. And she shares what we can do to make democracy possible.