Many eligible voters are prevented from voting due to barriers that constrain access to the polls.  These barriers can take many forms, including limiting the circumstances allowed for absentee voting, reducing or eliminating early voting times, closing poll locations, and imposing stringent voter identification requirements. Many of these barriers have a disproportionate impact on voters of color, young voters and voters living in areas where access to poll locations is difficult.

The work to ensure that all eligible voters can indeed cast their ballot is increasingly important as new barriers are being erected rapidly. It was a key theme for our lawyers working on multiple matters related to election protection in 2021.

“Fundamentally, we want to ensure that anyone who has the right to vote also has the ability to do so. One way to do that is to work within the existing environment to help voters navigate barriers by providing and facilitating access to information on what they need to do and how to do it,” explained Ting-Ting Kao, counsel in our Washington, DC office, who has spearheaded our work on elections for a number of years.  

While these barriers can affect any eligible voter, they disproportionately affect certain communities. For example, poll closures in non-white neighborhoods in Georgia and other states resulted in long lines. Lines can discourage eligible voters from casting a ballot. Similarly, reductions in early voting opportunities or limitations on absentee voting has made it more difficult for lower-wage workers who are more likely to be unable to leave work during the workday to vote. Strict voter ID requirements also disproportionately affect voters of color, young voters, elderly voters and women in some communities who may face greater difficulty obtaining or keeping up-to-date the requisite ID papers.  

Since the 2020 US Presidential election, many states have erected additional barriers to vote. In Texas, for example, many churches have traditionally facilitated early voting on Sunday for their congregants, helping them accommodate work, family and other commitments. However, as counties cut back on voting hours, particularly on Sunday, this option is available to fewer voters.

Working with The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 31 of our lawyers and legal team members from five offices helped update voting information on the 866ourvote.org website. Following significant changes in election administration since November 2020, the website needed to be updated to reflect new registration deadlines, voting hours and required documentation. Some of our lawyers also worked shifts on the non-partisan hotline Election Protection (866-Our-Vote), which the Lawyers’ Committee operates, to directly answer questions from voters.  

Our lawyers worked on a similar project with VoteRiders. Twelve White & Case lawyers joined lawyers from four other firms tasked with contacting Secretaries of State or Boards of Election for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The goal was to clarify what constituted a problem with a voter’s registration, how it could be remedied and in what timeframe. We took on 11 jurisdictions, collating the relevant information for VoteRiders. 

On another project, associate Hannah Rubashkin worked with the nonprofit Spread the Vote in Detroit, Michigan. Spread the Vote helps voters obtain the documentation they need to vote and access social services. Many voters use a driver’s license as their ID for voting. However, many voters who have had their license suspended, often for relatively minor infractions, are not able to use their license to vote. For those people, and others who struggle with the expense or difficulty of reinstating their license, there are high barriers to voting. Hannah helped Spread the Vote with research to streamline the license restoration process for its clients, including ways to reduce the associated restoration fees. She also created a letter-of-support template that Spread the Vote can personalize for their clients and submit to court to support them during the license restoration process.

Photo by Jose Luis Magana © Associated Press
Voting rights activists during a rally at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC