Hi from the Lawyers' Committee!

Hi everyone,
I'm Tony Dang, and I'm continuing my internship this summer at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. I work in the Voting Rights Project on a wide array of projects and the more mundane background research that needs to get done around the office.

For the past couple of months, I had been filling in for the vacant Campaign Manager position for the Committee's National Campaign for Fair Elections. This includes managing the website (you can check it out here), writing press releases and updates for the website, and assisting the Director with our lobbying efforts for election reform. One of the projects I completed that I am most proud of is our brand new Congressional telephone campaign system. Using our website and some software, I matched the all the zip codes in the United States to their respective Congressional districts. From there, I match the districts up to the correct Congressman's office. The purpose of all this is to be able to give constituents one single toll-free phone number with which they could reach their Congressman by simply punching in their zip code.

I had finished the technical part of this system about a month ago, preparing for its first major use with our efforts to gather support for the H.R. 1281, the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act. This act stipulates criminal penalties for deceptive practices and intimidation of voters on or near election days. This week, we had received word that the bill was back on the calendar and was to be introduced on the floor for a vote on Monday. So working with our newly hired Campaign Manager (after spending a lot of time bringing him up to speed), I drafted the letters we would send out to our campaign, as well as the appropriate pages for our website. Unfortunately, on Friday we learned that the House leadership had decided to put the bill on suspension calendar (meaning that House rules would be suspended for the bill and that generating support would not be necessary). Even though we won't be able to test out the new system yet, I'm glad that I was able to create the infrastructure necessary for our lobbying campaigns.

On Wednesday, I also attended our bi-weekly legal staff meeting. For me, this was an interesting experience because funding is a major concern to our organization. The Executive Director of the program reminded all the project directors to remain on the lookout for any possible grants and to scout likely donors. Later in the day, I attended a meeting with a website consultant. The project directors were meeting with the consultant to review the current website to the Lawyers' Committee (that needs much updating) and to discuss design approaches. I'll probably be helping with the redesign of the website in the near future.

On Thursday, I attended a talk at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on constitutional challenges to the Voting Rights Act. The current case is called North Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Gonzales, on which the Lawyers' Committee is also working. In this case, a small town is trying to remove itself from the jurisdiction of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Though this may not seem like a big deal, the outcome of this case would have huge implications on how the Department of Justice would enforce the Voting Rights Act in the future. I plan to write a paper on this topic this summer.

Well, that sums up last week. Sorry for the very long post. Now that this whole blogging thing seems to be working, I will update more frequently rather than all at once. Good luck to everyone at their internships!