The Colorado Lawyers Committee Launches Voting Rights Task Force
| Publication year | 1991 |
| Pages | 2035 |
| Citation | Vol. 10 No. 1991 Pg. 2035 |
1991, October, Pg. 2035. The Colorado Lawyers Committee Launches Voting Rights Task Force
The Colorado Lawyers Committee is a non-profit organization whose members include twenty-eight major Colorado law firms. For over ten years, the member firms have been committed to providing free legal services and assistance on poverty, civil rights and children's issues to individuals and groups throughout Colorado. In order to address the growing and varied needs of the populations served by the Lawyers Committee effectively, a number of task forces have been established. One of the most active of these groups is the Voting Rights Task Force, which was formed earlier this year.
The need to create a special Voting Rights Task Force grew out of the Colorado Lawyers Committee's strong interest in protecting minority voting rights through participation in the reap-portionment process, which has been initiated as a result of the 1990 census. Leading the Task Force are Dick Freese, former Chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party, and Chris Paulson, former Republican majority leader of the Colorado House of Representatives. The other members of the Task Force are Stephen Dunham, Adam Golodner, Laird Blue, Chris Leh, Randall Hub-bard, Gale Miller, Wilhemena Mitchell, Richard Westfall, Bill Rosser, Joyce Sterling and Marjorie Lewis.
The purposes of the Voting Rights project are: (1) to prevent the erosion of minority representation in legislative bodies; (2) to increase minority involvement in the political process; and (3) to ensure that plans for reapportionment and redistricting meet the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended.(fn1) This multi-faceted mission is largely derived from the language and purpose of amended § 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which provides that the Act is violated if, "based on the totality of circumstances," it is shown that members of a "protected class," such as minorities, "have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice." This principle guides the work of the Voting Rights Task Force as it seeks to monitor Colorado's redistricting process.
The Colorado Constitution, at Article V, § 44, charges the Colorado General...
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