Listen Live
Majic 102.3/92.7 Featured Video
CLOSE

The NAACP is leading a coalition that has launched a 50-state, nonpartisan registration and education campaign in response to what it calls “an unprecedented and coordinated attack on ballot access” that could keep up to 5 million voters away from the polls in 2012.

“When our community was celebrating in 2008 the breaking of the color barrier at the White House we should have been planning for the backlash to follow,” Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

“History has shown that after each advancement in voting rights there was a backlash. It happened after the Civil War, it happened after the passage of the Voting Rights Act and it happened after the election of the first black president.”

The voter registration campaign was announced at Clark-Atlanta University in Atlanta on Wednesday and will seek to register hundreds of thousands of new voters in coordination with state and college NAACP chapters, voter advocacy groups and other civil rights organizations using traditional recruiting methods as well as mobile and online technology.

This Is My Vote! also features a national voter empowerment hotline (1-866-MY-VOTE-1), registration mailings to more than 1 million black youth who will turn 18 by Election Day and partnerships with national faith organizations.

Jealous said the HBCUs are “ground zero” in the campaign and starting in Georgia had particular significance because the state, in addition to reducing the window on early voting, has not one, but two ID laws: a voter ID requirement and a registration ID requirement, which means you have to get the ID in order to register to vote.

For those who do not already have government ID, the process can be cumbersome. If you don’t have proper ID on Election Day, you may file a provisional ballot, but then must mail a copy of your voter ID or appropriate photo ID in order for the provisional ballot to be counted. A copy of valid photo ID must also accompany absentee ballots.

The NAACP is targeting 12 states for an enhanced registration, education and GOTV (Get Out The Vote) campaign, which will include paid directors and staff for volunteer recruitment and training, direct mail and paid advertising. The targeted states are: Virginia, Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, California and Georgia.

These restrictions include:

•    Laws passed in Florida and Texas restricting voter registration drives.

•    Limitations in Florida, Maine, Ohio and Wisconsin on when and where people can register to vote.

•    Laws in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia reduce the window for early voting.

•    Several states, including Florida and Mississippi, are improperly purging voters from the registration rolls. (In Florida, a flawed purge program incorrectly flagged and purged 12,000 voters. More than 70 percent of those voters were African-American or Latino.)

•    New photo ID laws requiring government-issued voter identification have passed in Texas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Kansas and Tennessee. (21 million Americans don’t have photo ID, including 25 percent of African-Americans of voting age)

•    Florida and Iowa have reversed earlier decisions that made it easier for people with felony convictions to restore their voting rights. The decision affects hundreds of thousands of voters.

•    In 2011, at least 34 states introduced voter suppression legislation, with laws passing in 14 of those states, and laws pending in eight.

Read more at Black America Web