ONLINE: Courts, COVID-19 & Voter Suppression

×

Expand

Bethanie Hines

ACLU Northern California executive director Abdi Soltani.

The Wisconsin Book Festival and Bay Area Book Festival are collaborating on presenting several events this month. This livestream is of special interest here in Wisconsin, where voters were forced to go ahead with in-person elections during the coronavirus pandemic. Discussing these weighty topics are scholars/authors Richard Hasen (Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy) and Alan Hirsch (A Short History of Presidential Election Crises), ACLU of Northern California executive director Abdi Soltani, and Sister District Project founder Lala Wu. RSVP for a link. 

press release: Courts, COVID-19 & Voter Suppression

Presented in partnership with the Bay Area Book Festival, Richard Hasen, Alan Hirsch, Abdi Soltani, and Lala Wu discuss the courts' role in protecting our right to vote amid the pandemic. Watch the event online. 

We’ve all seen the images from the recent in-person election in Wisconsin: people lined up wearing masks, some holding signs saying “THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” as they risked deadly COVID-19 illness and violated a shelter-in-place order simply to exercise the right to vote. Perhaps the most disturbing part of this scenario was the fact that it wouldn’t have happened without a last-minute ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that rolled back an absentee ballot extension period that had been put in place expressly to mitigate contagion potential from in-person voting. With less than six months to go until the 2020 Presidential election, and with the COVID-19 pandemic expected to remain in full force, can we expect a repeat of the debacle in Wisconsin—this time, on a national scale? In the aftermath of 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder verdict that shattered the Voting Rights Act, how much can we rely on our courts as the last line of defense in our right to vote?

Three nationally recognized experts will lead us through the role of the courts in ensuring voters’ access to vital options like absentee ballots and early voting, and show us how everyday citizens can act now to shape the judiciary in the short and long term. Featuring legal scholar Richard Hasen, whose Election Meltdown was deemed “required reading for legislators and voters” by Kirkus in a starred review; Constitutional scholar Alan Hirsch, whose A Short History of Presidential Election Crises was praised as “lucid, balanced, and deeply informed” by Elizabeth Kolbert; and renowned civil rights leader Abdi Soltani, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. Moderated by Lala Wu, whose Sister District Project enlists 40,000 women nationwide in the fight to win crucial state legislative elections.