Cada Voto Cuenta trains and mobilizes hundreds of volunteers in New York, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania to monitor and ensure that obstacles do not hinder Latinos' access to the voting booth on election . Equipped with voting rights information and a mobile app that provides guidance and facilitates reports of voter discrimination or vote suppression at election sites, LatinoJustice's nonpartisan volunteers will make sure that every vote counts during this critical election year.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a disastrous decision striking down Section 4 of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed that jurisdictions with a history of enacting discriminatory laws designed to deny access to the ballot to communities of color would be subject to federal preclearance before enacting any election laws or changes that might impact voting rights and access. Many states have since implemented discriminatory practices and laws that shut out Latino voters.
Cada Voto Cuenta will help ordinary citizens guard against unlawful and exclusionary practices that would shut out Latino voters. Through training, legal rights information and our Voter Protection App, volunteers will be able to respond immediately to voter discrimination and suppression by connecting affected voters to our rapid response hotline, providing our voter education information and reporting voter rights violations. Our network of pro bono attorneys will be prepared to assist.
This project will create a body of data to help identify ongoing obstacles to voting and geographic areas where Latinos are routinely being disenfranchised by unlawful tactics designed to keep them from casting their votes. This data will help to rebuild federal protections that would prevent states and local jurisdictions from placing last-minute obstacles to block communities of color from voting. Cada Voto Cuenta will potentially impact hundreds of thousands of voters.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).