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Friend,
Donald Eaglin was in a quandary and didn’t even know it.
The 25-year-old Jeanerette, Louisiana, native was planning to vote on Nov. 13. But when he arrived at the Jeanerette City Hall just blocks from his home to cast a ballot – as he had in every election since he was first able to vote in 2016 – the polling place was no longer there.
“I went to town to go vote,” Eaglin said. “Then they told me I had to go to Belle Place.” Belle Place Middle School, where Eaglin’s precinct had been relocated without his knowledge, is nearly 10 miles away.
But fortunately, volunteers with A New Chapter PUSH – a ministerial organization in Iberia Parish that helps residents exercise their right to vote – not only found out where his new polling place was but took him there, too.
“When we went to pick him up to vote, he said he voted at City Hall,” said the Rev. Wilfred Johnson, founder of the organization also known as ANC/PUSH. “We used the QR code on his registration to make sure where he was going to vote and got him there.”
The group – which also went door to door encouraging residents to vote and helped them get to the polls for early voting – had been preparing for these sorts of issues to crop up for months, ever since the Iberia Parish Council approved a consolidation of voting precincts.
The parish’s “cleaning up” process cut the number of precincts nearly in half – from 64 to 37. Under the new plan, five of the eight polling places that were closed served a higher-than-average number of Black voters, raising concerns that the move disproportionately affected people of color.
Officials say the move was intended to save taxpayers money and not to disenfranchise anyone. But the reduction in polling places in predominantly Black areas prompted a grassroots effort by ANC/PUSH, Black Voters Matter and other groups that worked tirelessly to ensure that every voter in the parish knew where they were supposed to vote and – if necessary – provided them with transportation.
“Organizers shouldn’t have to compensate for unfair election administration and discriminatory obstacles to voting – but time and again, they shoulder that burden,” said Liza Weisberg, a staff attorney with the Voting Rights Practice Group at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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