Project Vote (or Voting for America, Inc.) is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that works with marginalized and under-represented voters. Its current executive director is Michael Slater, who has worked for Project Vote since 2004. Project Vote's efforts to engage low income and minority voters in the civic process include the provision of training, management, evaluation and technical services.
Project Vote was founded in 1994 as Voting for America, and changed its name in 1997 to Project Vote/Voting for America. In 2010, the organization dropped Voting for America from its name. An earlier, unrelated organization, known as Project VOTE!, was active between 1984 and 1994. It is best remembered for a highly successful Chicago voter registration drive run by Barack Obama in 1992.
Between 1994 and 2008, Project Vote often coordinated voter registration campaigns with local chapters of ACORN. It has also worked with organizations such as Demos, National Voting Rights Institute, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and the Fair Elections Legal Network regarding election administration policy and voting rights, including enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act through research, litigation and technical assistance.
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“I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates ... as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.”
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