With the 2012 election season rapidly approaching, the urgency of ensuring equitable access to voting and minimizing other barriers to civic engagement will prove crucial in this year's vote.  At the most basic level, voting rights are local rights.  Our ability to cast votes in a fair and equitable way depends on the availability of resources provided to communities on the local level.  

Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires certain counties and jurisdictions to provide bilingual voting materials in communities with language minorities and limited-English proficient residents.  In an effort to strengthen access to voting for all, the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice (Advancing Justice) recently released a Section 203 advocacy manual. The advocacy manual is part of a toolkit of resources that Advancing Justice has developed to help advocates work with their local Elections Department or Registrar of Voters to ensure your community gets the language resources it deserves.  Other toolkit resources include a Section 203 implementation checklist and a series of webinars on Section 203 advocacy.  Our second webinar will take place:

Title:	Conducting Advocacy With Election Officials to Ensure Compliance with Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act (Part 2 of 2)
Date:	Monday, March 18, 2012
Time:	11:00 AM - 12:30 PM PST

Space is limited.
Reserve your webinar seat now at:  https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/764873583

This webinar is free and open to all members of the public.  Individuals who are interested in Section 203 VRA advocacy or general voting rights issues are encouraged to attend.

This is the second of two workshops focusing on how community members can advocate with election officials to make sure that they provide adequate language assistance in elections.  This advocacy is tied to a federal law called Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which in brief requires counties across the country to provide language assistance to Asian American and other voters.  The law has contributed to Asian American political empowerment, but only when election officials provide language assistance effectively. 

The purpose of the two workshops is to provide community members with information and tools that they can use in advocacy efforts with election officials leading up to Election Day, with the goal of having election officials provide competent and appropriate language assistance during the 2012 election cycle. 

This second workshop builds off the first workshop by covering Section 203 implementation issues such as pre-election publicity and outreach; bilingual poll worker recruitment, training and targeting; election hotlines; and election day troubleshooting. 

The first workshop provided an overview of Section 203 and its requirements and also covered Section 203 implementation issues such as the determination of which languages to provide assistance in, and translated written materials. 

These two workshops will be followed by a third workshop on conducting poll monitoring efforts on Election Day.

Title:	Conducting Advocacy With Election Officials to Ensure Compliance with Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act (Part 2 of 2)
Date:	Monday, March 18, 2012
Time:	11:00 AM - 12:30 PM PST

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/764873583