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Guest Speaker on Voter Suppression and Postcard Campaign Update
Please join us for the official launch of the Reform Movement's 2020 Civic Engagement Campaign with guest speaker Myrna Pérez, Director of Voting Rights and Elections at the Brennan Center for Justice. Myrna will discuss how just 7 years ago, the Supreme Court swept away a key protection of the Voting Rights Act in the much-discussed case, Shelby County v. Holder.
Shortly after the Court’s decision, several states, mostly in the South, enacted restrictive voter laws. Today, in this campaign, we write postcards to help voters navigate barriers. As the late civil rights icon Rep. Elijah Cummings once said, it is voting that affects our destiny.
At the end of Myrna's remarks, we will provide a short update on our postcard kits.
About Myrna:
Myrna Pérez is director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program, and leads the Program's research, advocacy, and litigation work nationwide. An expert on voting rights and election administration, she is the author of several nationally recognized reports and articles. Her work has been featured in media outlets across the country, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and MSNBC. She has testified before Congress and several state legislatures on a variety of voting rights related issues. She is a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School and has also served as an adjunct professor of clinical law at NYU School of Law.
Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Pérez was the Civil Rights Fellow at Relman, Dane & Colfax, a civil rights law firm in Washington, DC. She graduated from Columbia Law School, where she was a Lowenstein Public Interest Fellow. Following law school, Pérez clerked for Hon. Anita B. Brody of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and for Hon. Julio M. Fuentes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She previously served as the chair of the Election Law Committee of the City of New York Bar Association. Pérez is the recipient of several awards, including the Puerto Rican Bar Association Award for Excellence in Academia and the New Jersey League of Women Voters Making Democracy Work Award, and was named one of 2014’s 50 Hispanic Influentials by Hispanic Business.
Pérez earned her undergraduate degree in political science from Yale University. She obtained a master's degree in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School, where she was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Public Service. Prior to law school, she was a Presidential Management Fellow, serving as a policy analyst for the United States Government Accountability Office on issues including housing and health care.