A Passion for Voting Rights
A Passion for Voting Rights
Interview with Attorney Alexandra Mora, civil rights attorney, on her early days litigating voter registration cases.
Question: What do you think about the current attempts to make registering to vote more difficult?
Attorney Mora: I’m deeply troubled by it. Voting is such an important right. Why do States make it more difficult to exercise? I mean, we know the reason, but on a fundamental level, why are we as Americans not more outraged about this? Why isn’t it more of a priority?
Q: Have you always felt this way about it?
Attorney Mora: When I was younger, not so strongly. However, now I firmly believe in it. I’m also troubled by the electoral college, but that’s another story. In any event, I’m empathetic to other Americans who are not as outraged about voter registration because I’ve been there, but I’ve learned.
Q: What happened to change your mind?
Attorney Mora: When I was first out of law school, I was hired by a nonprofit called CCILegal. We were a pool of lawyers and other professionals that provided legal representation to ACORN, Project Vote, and other like-minded organizations. It was cost effective for them to share our expenses. One of my early campaigns was working with them on voter registration lawsuits. I learned a lot about voter registration issues while representing them in these suits.
Q: What is ACORN?
Attorney Mora: ACORN stands for Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. It was started back in the 1970s to create a membership association to help low-income citizens with issues that affected them. So rather then being single-issue, ACORN would work on various campaigns that its membership deemed important to its socio-economic group.
Back in the 1990s, voter registration laws went to the top of the list. It was 1994, and Clinton’s “Motor Voter” law had been enacted. The official name of the law was the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA. It was informally called the “Motor Voter” Law because it required states to make it easier for people to register to vote by requiring states to offer it conveniently to its citizens, like, for example, at DMV offices. Many states refused to enforce it, claiming a constitutional issue. These states had a very weak position, but took a “make me” position. So we sued, and won, generally on summary judgment.
Q: What were some of the states you sued?
Attorney Mora: I think the first lawsuit I worked on was the one against Michigan. ACORN v. Miller. We sued Illinois. There we entered into a consent decree, which Illinois then tried to get out of. ACORN v. Edgar. We sued Louisiana, twice. ACORN v. Fowler. We sued a number of other states—New York, Pennsylvania, California. The first round of suits was to require states to enforce it at all. Then we sued if we believed that they were not being diligent about offering voter registration in all social services as required. So for example, some might offer voter registration at DMV offices, but not at other social service offices.
Q: How did you change your mind about the importance of making voter registration easier for citizens?
Attorney Mora: It was not something I thought a lot about previously. I guess I just thought if you want to register to vote, you just do it. No big deal. I didn’t understand that states enacted laws to make it easier to turn people away at the polls, or purged voters from lists, and that there were a lot of games involved. My first lawsuit was the one in Michigan. I was not the lead attorney in that one, but I wrote the briefs. So it was my first time researching the new laws. We won on summary judgment, which was exciting to me. Then we need to propose relief—what did we want to set things right. So I proposed monitoring to make sure that Michigan would do what it was supposed to do. For some time after that, we would receive reports of the increase in voters registered. It felt great to know that our efforts resulted in more people voting. This kind of woke me up to the fact that making voter registration simpler was important work. It also made me think that maybe not everyone is raised in a home where registering to vote is a priority, or where it’s part of what you do. So making it easier for people maybe shifts their values or paradigm a bit.
Q: What do you think now?
Attorney Mora: I think we should find easy, legal, safe ways for everyone to register to vote online or by mail, and to vote online or by mail. We perform some of the most sensitive functions online today—we can do all of our banking online, we can transfer money between accounts, pay our bills, buy stock, buy real estate—all online. For people who don’t have easy access to a computer, we can offer mail. So with all of our modern technology, why do we still make people take time off from work or busy schedules and stand in line to vote. That’s another thing, if we are going to make people stand in line—let’s make it a holiday. We have labor day and memorial day free—vote on those days—or add a federal holiday—voting day!
Q: What about claims that the system is being abused or may be abused?
Attorney Mora: It’s a myth. There are countless studies and articles about it, and stories of voter fraud have been debunked. It has been called “extraordinarily rare” by the Brennan Center. What is more prevalent is voter suppression, and improper purging of voters.
Q: Requiring ID seems reasonable. Why do you oppose those kinds of safeguards?
Attorney Mora: There’s a lot of data out there on how states use ID laws to deter low-income voters, the disabled, minorities and the elderly. While some states offer alternative ID to a driver’s license for voting, getting that ID costs money. It sometimes requires obtaining and paying for a birth certificate. In rural areas, getting to these offices is burdensome. Also, many states discriminate in whawt kind of photo ID they allow. For example, Texas allows using a concealed weapons permit to vote, but not a student ID. Other states had similarly discriminatory laws, some of which have been struck down. See ACLU, Voter ID Legislation. But striking those down require court challenges. This is a never-ending battle.
Q: Any other voting issues you’ve worked on?
Attorney Mora: I did handle one case on behalf of a candidate. Kevin Friloux wanted to run for local office, but he believed he was being retaliated against for doing so. That was an interesting case that went to trial. Some of the facts and legal issues were subtle, so it was interesting. See article regarding Friloux v. St. Charles School Board.
Q: Will you continue the fight?
Attorney Mora: I’d like to do so. I no longer work for nonprofits, but I would certainly help how I can. I donate and do what I can. This election year, I’d like to help register citizens to vote in some way—maybe tabling or going door-to-door.
Q: Thanks for your time!