Five Questions with Janai Nelson

President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Janai Nelson is President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. It was founded in 1940 by Thurgood Marshall, the highly esteemed civil rights lawyer who later became the nation’s first Black Supreme Court Justice. LDF lawyers masterminded the legal strategy that led to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Today, they play a foundational role in protecting the right of voters in elections across the country, among other issues.

Janai is a formidable lawyer. She was one of the lead counsel in Veasey v. Abbott, a successful federal challenge to Texas’s unduly restrictive voter ID law in 2018. She is also highly regarded as an academic with expertise in voting rights and election law. She was an associate dean at St. John’s University School of Law before she joined LDF in 2014, and her scholarship on issues including gerrymandering continues to be published in prestigious legal publications like the NYU Law Journal and Columbia Law Review.

It is truly an honor to have Janai here with us tonight, as we face some of the most unusual and serious pre-election voting rights issues the nation has ever encountered. Many of you have asked about the impact of the recent hurricanes, Helene and Milton, on the election. Janai is here to discuss those issues and more with us tonight.

Before we get to the Q&A, I want to make sure you’re aware of some of the resources LDF has available for voters. Their Guide to Elections and Voting is a first-rate resource for making sure you’re ready to vote. It includes guidance for college students who are away from home and advice on researching state and local issues and candidates. Make sure you share it and bookmark it for future use! LDF also has a guide to State Voting Rights Acts and a guide to local elections.

“Five Questions” is a feature for paid subscribers, my way of thanking people who are able to support this work so that I can devote the necessary time and resources to it. I appreciate having all of you here. Free subscriptions, with access to my other posts, will always be available. Thank you for reading the newsletter and engaging in the hard but essential work of civil discourse.

Joyce: What has the impact of the two major storms, Helene and Milton, been on voting?

Janai: Hurricane Helene had a devastating impact across the South. Tragically, more than 230 people lost their lives in the storm and the destruction it wrought spans more than 400 miles. In Georgia, where LDF has been involved in litigation, citizens have faced, and continue to face, widespread flooding, damaged roadways, power outages, and internet outages, all of which completely hindered their ability to register to vote if they hadn’t yet done so. Postal services were also suspended, and county board of election offices were closed in several counties in the critical week leading up to the voter registration deadline. Taken together, these closures and outages mean potential voters could have been denied access to in-person, online, and mail-in voter registration options. This timing was particularly devastating because, according to an analysis of data from the Secretary of State’s statewide voter list, registrations spike in Georgia during the last week. In 2020, the registrations were up almost 58% in the final week of voter registration compared to the week prior, and up 56% during that same period in 2022.

In Florida, voters have faced two back-to-back disasters in the critical weeks before election day, first from Hurricane Helene and now with Hurricane Milton. Hurricane Helene’s destruction alone had a significant impact on Floridians, thousands of whom were displaced by the storm, and recovery was still ongoing when Hurricane Milton struck earlier this week. In the aftermath of Helene, election officials in several counties have also reported that the displacement of voters and poll workers, as well as damage to voting sites and disruptions to election infrastructure, caused challenges. That impact is why we asked the governors and election officials to extend the voter registration deadline in advocacy letters and in the court.

Joyce: There has been litigation in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida about how recent storms have impacted voters’ rights. What were the goals of those lawsuits, and where do they stand?

Janai: The judges in Florida and Georgia decided after hearing evidence of disfranchisement resulting from the hurricanes that an extension of the registration deadline was not merited. These decisions fly in the face of common understanding of the impact of an extreme weather event on everyday lives. For example, in Georgia, we presented witness testimony about how the impact of Hurricane Helene prevented organizations from carrying out voter registration activities and enforcement before the voter registration deadline. Organizations within the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, which has over 5,000 individual members in the state, were forced to cancel formal and informal registration events in at least 24 counties due to the storm. All 180 branch offices of the Georgia NAACP were closed between Sept. 27 and Oct. 4 due to Hurricane Helene and the governor’s state of emergency declaration, which ground their voter registration activities, one of the historic organization’s core functions, to a halt. And the New Georgia Project was completely unable to carry out door-to-door voter canvassing and voter registration activities in several cities where they operate due to the storm. Yet and still, judges decided to rule against these plaintiffs. 

But we have seen some officials do the right thing. In North Carolina, the bipartisan State Election Board unanimously approved several emergency measures to ensure citizens of the state are not disenfranchised by a natural disaster. And, in South Carolina, following advocacy by LDF and others, the voter registration deadline was extended to Oct. 14 to account for disruptions caused by Hurricane Helene.

Joyce: What should voters do in the face of these decisions? What are the most important steps voters in affected areas can take?

Janai: First, we want anyone affected by the hurricane to get the resources they need for basic shelter and sustenance. We encourage anyone who is injured, displaced, or otherwise harmed to seek help at disasterassistance.gov.

Second, we need anyone who is registered and able to vote to do everything in their power to cast a vote that will be counted. That means double-checking your registration at vote.org and curing any defects before Election Day. It also means having two plans to vote: your normal plan and your emergency plan. Your normal plan should be to go to your polling site (check the location beforehand) to cast an in-person ballot. Your emergency plan should include making a timely request for an absentee or mail-in ballot if you don’t think you’ll be able to make it to the polls for any reason, including weather.

Third, make sure everyone in your orbit has their two plans, and find ways to help them if you’re able. This election requires all hands-on deck and team effort.

Joyce: Tell us about the other work you're doing at the Legal Defense Fund. What are you concerned about with this election, and what do people need to be aware of?

Janai: The Legal Defense Fund works in service of Black voters, and right now we are deeply engaged in efforts to activate Black political power this election and beyond through our Black Voters on the Rise initiative.

Black voters care very deeply about the issues, including the economy, access to health care, access to good schools, and gun violence.

Those issues and more are at stake during every election, but especially this one.

In fact, this year the stakes could not be higher given the number of pivotal issues that will impact the day-to-day lives of Black people that are on the ballot.

First, reproductive rights – The Supreme Court rolled back decades of precedent in overturning Roe v. Wade and jeopardizing our ability to determine when and whether we can have a family. If we want to remedy that, we need to vote because it is on the ballot. There are statewide ballot measures on reproductive rights on the ballot in 11 states this election.

The Supreme Court also rolled back decades of precedent that allows the consideration of race in determining who has access to colleges and universities across the country. That is our pipeline to leadership. That is our pipeline to power. And we want that changed; it is on the ballot.

Third, our freedom to learn, get information, go to the library, and pick out a book we want is on the ballot. There were over 10,000 instances of book bans from July 2021 to the end of the 2023 school year, according to Pen America. So, our right to learn is on the ballot.

The stakes for the judiciary are also incredibly high. The next President could potentially appoint up to three Supreme Court Justices.  We have seen the damage this Supreme Court has done to roll back the progress we have made on civil rights. We cannot afford to go backwards any further. We must be positioned to ensure the next round of Supreme Court nominees are pro-civil rights.

Joyce: Following this election, I hope one of our elected officials’ top priorities will be restoring protections for American voters. If we're in that position after the election, what do you think needs to happen? What measures should all of us encourage our elected officials to prioritize and support?

Janai: Voting rights, some of the most fundamental rights of them all, are also on the ballot. Since the devastating decision in Shelby v. Holder, we have lost a significant number of protections under the Voting Rights Act. But there are at least three bills in Congress that could help restore them and give us greater protections in our future elections: the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, and the Native American Voting Rights Act. We need to elect candidates who will advance these bills and ensure voter protections for the years and decades to come. With the number of assaults that we are facing, the only way to counteract that is if every eligible voter exercises their rights and casts a ballot.

But, in the absence of Congressional action, I am pleased that seven states have implemented State Voting Rights Acts in the wake of Shelby. In fact, the first ever state-level preclearance program in the country, part of the New York Voting Rights Act, will be in effect during this year’s election.  

This is incredibly important and commendable, and we are encouraged by the fact that additional states are considering state voting rights act legislation. But Congress needs to act, too. We need strong, concrete protections in place on a national level. In 2020, it took Herculean efforts to generate the historic levels of voter turnout we saw across the country. But that level of effort is not sustainable. And, in the long run, we will not always be able to litigate or organize our way out of voter suppression.

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Janai always inspires me to believe that we can accomplish more and that we can have the America we want to have. Let’s go vote!

We’re in this together,

Joyce