Imani K. Bryant & Janai Nelson speak about election protection during the ESSENCE 'Paint The Polls Black' town hall.
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00:00Now we are going to transition to our final guests of the night.
00:03Janae Nelson, who is the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,
00:09commonly referred to as LDEF, and Imani Bryant, who is a scholar and an activist.
00:15First, Ms. Nelson has helped to steward some of LDEF's most pivotal developments
00:21in the past seven years, including guiding the design and launching one of the most
00:27far-reaching efforts to create the next generation of civil rights leaders
00:31under a program called the Marshall Motley Scholars Program.
00:36Imani is a two-time graduate of Howard University's recently completing
00:41a Master's of Political Science. She's an undergraduate student, and she's focused
00:46on Black LGBTQ inclusion in Black power through the Liberation Theology Framework.
00:53Okay, so she's smart.
00:55I love it.
00:56And as a Master's student, they focused on dismantling the white supremacy inherent
01:03in the American Protestant Church. Okay.
01:07Come through. I just get a shout-out. Hell yeah.
01:11We are excited to have Janae Nelson and Imani. Thank you so much for coming
01:16to discuss your roles in advocating for election protection.
01:22Are you both with us?
01:23Can you hear me?
01:24Yes, we can hear you both.
01:26How are you?
01:27I'm good. I'm good. We're all facing a little bit of anxiety as we approach the next few days,
01:33the next few weeks of the election. And I think what I want to do, Janae, is maybe start with you,
01:40because so much of this, unfortunately, ends up in the courts.
01:44And maybe you can give folks a little bit of context of what you think are the most significant
01:50ongoing litigation efforts that are aimed at defending or challenging voting rights.
01:56We had Damon Hewitt on earlier, who gave us a little bit of a context as well as to what
02:00the Lawyers' Committee is doing. But maybe you can tell us about, from your vantage point,
02:04what do you think are the most significant ongoing litigation efforts that are aimed
02:08at defending or challenging voting rights?
02:11Sure. Happy to talk about that. Hello, Ebony, and hello, Imani. It's wonderful to be
02:15on this panel with you all. We at the Legal Defense Fund have been fighting for voting
02:20rights for the past 85 years. And it's what we did at our founding, and it's what we've
02:25sadly had to continue to do. We've enforced the Voting Rights Act in countless cases. And as
02:32many people know, the Voting Rights Act is no longer the strong piece of legislation that it
02:38once was because of the Supreme Court. So we now have to use other tools. We've been in state
02:43courts. We've been in federal courts. We just had two victories last week that I think is really
02:47important for people to know about. We've worked with some of our colleagues, including the
02:52Lawyers' Committee, including the Advancement Project and other organizations that fight to
02:59protect Black voting rights in particular and to expand voting power. But Georgia, as you know,
03:06is a hotbed, a hotbed of voting rights challenges and restrictions. And so we have been very active
03:14in Georgia. We proudly represent Delta Sigma Theta, the League of Women Voters, and a group
03:21of individual voters. We're working with partners at the Southern Poverty Law Center and Campaign
03:26Legal Center. And many people have read in the news that Georgia, the state election board,
03:32adopted some new rules this past summer that were aimed at putting a lot of power and authority
03:40in the hands of the election board, many of whom are political actors and operatives. And one of
03:47the most concerning rules that they adopted was a procedure where they could just use their
03:52discretion to revisit the balloting and to hand count the ballots, which we know could lead to
04:01potential election sabotage. So we testified against it. We wrote amicus briefs in support of
04:08ending that rule. And just last week, we received two victories in enjoining that rule or the host
04:16of rules that were enacted. So we are very happy with that result. We expect that that may be
04:22challenged as well. And if so, we're going to continue to litigate it as far as we need to,
04:26to make sure that the election is not stolen, that it is not infected with this type of partisan
04:34activity, and especially in those counties where Black voters can make a difference in the election
04:40outcome. And that is something that we've been doing for decades, and we will continue to do
04:46it this election, where we are seeing even more significant challenges to the right to vote.
04:51But that's just one state. We are in many states. We actually have an election protection program
04:55across seven states, mainly in the South. We also have expanded our election protection
05:01program to include the canvassing of ballots. So we're protecting the vote once the ballots
05:06have been cast. We want to make sure that they are fairly counted. So our whole operation is
05:12very extensive, and we invite anyone who's interested in joining and volunteering with us.
05:16As I just heard the Reverend mention, being a poll monitor, we bring an army of people to the polls
05:23every election, and this year will be the largest effort yet. If you want to sign up,
05:27you can go to ldf.vote. That's ldf.vote. Let me ask you really quickly, in our last segment,
05:37Keturah said something that stuck out to me, and that is, don't be deceit if you're not in the
05:41South, basically, because there are Northern states that are having some of the same issues
05:46as well. Not as much, but we know that it's still happening. Can you talk about anything that you're
05:50seeing there, so people in the North don't get so comfortable? And then...