Leading Voices Supporting a Right to Vote Amendment
Growing support for a constitutional right to vote
Judith Browne Dianis, Co-Director of the Advancement Project, has an extensive background in civil rights litigation and advocacy focused on voting, education, housing, and employment. She spoke in support of a Right to Vote Amendment at the "Is it time for a Right to Vote in the Constitution?" panel in Washington, DC (featured to the right).
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Rob Richie has directed FairVote since its founding in 1992, and is an expert on international and domestic elections and electoral reform. He has spoken extensively to organizations and at conferences about the Right to Vote Amendment, including this speech from the Right to Vote Forum in Boston, MA, in 2004. He has also been featured on several major TV news outlets, including this appearance on C-span. Richie also described the value of Right to Vote Resolutions as part of FairVote’s Promote Our Vote project in this Huffington Post Article.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. has provided support for an explicit right to vote in his weekly commentary in the Chicago Sun-Times on March of 2014, and on August 4, 2014 in support of H.J. Res. 44. He is currently building a groundswell of cities including Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta, that have passed Right to Vote Resolutions calling on Congress to establish an explicit right to vote in the U.S. Constitution.
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Jamie Raskin is a professor of law at American University and is currently a Maryland State Senator. He has written and spoken extensively on behalf of a Right to Vote Amendment, as well as how voters within the District of Columbia are without proper representation in the Federal Government. Senator Raskin describes the critical need for an explicit right to vote in the U.S. Constitution in a 2001 article for The American Prospect, and again in a paper prepared for the "Claim Democracy" Conference in November of 2003.
John Nichols is an author and the Washington Correspondent for The Nation. His article, Guarantee the Right to Vote (2004), supports a Right to Vote Amendment. He also profiled U.S. House Members Keith Ellison and Mark Pocan in their pursuit of a Right to Vote Amendment in an article from March of 2013 published in The Nation.
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Rashad Robinson serves as the Executive Director of ColorOfChange, and has worked for over a decade to mobilize communities throughout the country to build more inclusive political structures. He has previously held leadership positions with The Right to Vote Campaign and FairVote. Robinson collaborated with Judith Browne Dianis to write a Huffington Post blog on the need for an explicit right to vote in the Constitution in response to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Alex Keyssar of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government produced a reflection on the history of Constitutional Amendments and the Right to Vote for the "Claiming Democracy" Conference in Washington, DC, in 2003. He is also the author of The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, published in 2000. Keyssar discusses his book in the video to the right.
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