National Expert to Discuss Voter Suppression in the Trump Era October 7

NASHVILLE – Dale Ho, director of the national American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project, will lead a discussion on voter suppression and the ACLU’s efforts to fight it nationwide in Nashville on Saturday, October 7. The event, “Voter Suppression in the Trump Era,” will discuss how the ACLU is fighting back against voter suppression from the White House to statehouses nationwide and how community members can take action to protect access to the ballot box.

“Mr. Ho’s visit to Tennessee comes at a critical time in our nation’s history, with Trump’s so-called ‘Election Integrity’ Commission hawking wild exaggerations about election irregularities to justify voter suppression tactics,” said Hedy Weinberg, ACLU-TN executive director. “The ACLU is committed in Tennessee and nationwide to fighting back against these attempts to roll back voting rights.”

Dale Ho is a nationally-recognized expert on voting rights, supervising ACLU’s voting rights litigation and advocacy work nationwide. A Yale Law School graduate, he has active cases in over a dozen states throughout the country. He is an adjunct professor of law at New York University School of Law, a frequent commentator on voting rights issues on national television, and the author of numerous law review articles.

Ho’s talk marks the formal launch of the ACLU of Tennessee’s “No Barriers to the Ballot Box Campaign.” Of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Tennessee ranked fiftieth in overall voter turnout in the 2014 election. The goal of ACLU-TN’s campaign is to eliminate obstacles to voting that contribute to Tennessee’s low voter participation.

The campaign is initially focused on reforming Tennessee’s onerous and complicated voter restoration law for people with felony convictions. Over 420,000 Tennesseans are disenfranchised under Tennessee’s current law, three-quarters of whom have completed their sentences yet are still unable to vote due to the state’s burdensome restoration process. The campaign is also supporting efforts to modernize Tennessee’s voter registration system, including automatic registration and same-day registration.

At the forefront of civil liberties battles across Tennessee, ACLU-TN employs a range of strategies including advocacy, education, legislative lobbying and litigation to ensure that Tennesseans’ constitutional freedoms are being protected. An affiliate of the national ACLU, ACLU-TN is a private, non-profit, non-partisan membership organization.

The event will be held at Casa Azafrán, located at 2195 Nolensville Pike in Nashville, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please visit www.aclu-tn.org or call 615-320-7142.