Lawyers at the Ready for Election Day Disputes
A group called the Election Protection Coalition will be dispatching lawyers today to take calls of voter complaints and go to court to preserve voting access.
Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice, told Legal Times he expects to see a lot of courtroom battles. “We expect litigation up to the time the confetti falls and the balloons are let loose,” he said. The Brennan Center is one of more than 100 groups participating in the coalition, which boasts of more than 10,000 lawyer, paralegal and law student volunteers.
Lawyers at 40 law firms will be staffing a nationwide hotline, according to the Legal Times story. Participating law firms include Kirkland & Ellis, Davis Polk, Simpson Thacher, Proskauer Rose, White & Case, and Sullivan & Cromwell, ABAJournal.com noted in an earlier post. The Legal Times story lists other participating firms as Reed Smith, DLA Piper, Patton Boggs and Bingham McCutchen.
A website hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation will chronicle allegations of voting irregularities. A recent post told of more than 700 early voters who waited more than eight hours at a polling place in Kansas City. The report says hundreds of voters were told to return at a time after the polls would be closed.
