The Intersectionality of Voting Security and Justice

Presented by the ChIPs Social Justice Committee

ABOUT 

You are invited to join us for the next installment in our ongoing discussion of the intersectionality of voting security and justice. The right to vote is vital to democracy and it is critical to remain abreast of the issues as the voting landscape evolves across the country. We are honored to welcome three extraordinary guest speakers who are advocates and educators for this basic freedom. These three women are ardent defenders of the constitution and will share their knowledge and stories. 

DATE & TIME 

Tuesday, April 19th 

11:15am – 12:45pm PT

2:15pm – 3:45pm ET

REGISTRATION REQUIRED

REGISTER HERE 

Kim Wyman 

CISA’s Senior Election Security Lead in the Biden Administration 

Kim Wyman joined the Biden Administration as CISA’s Senior Election Security Lead. As an expert on elections and experienced Secretary of State, her appointment speaks to the Agency’s dedication to working with election officials throughout the nation in a non-partisan manner to ensure the security and resilience of our election infrastructure. Kim Wyman was Washington’s 15th Secretary of State. First elected in 2012, she is only the second woman to serve as Secretary of State in Washington’s history. Prior to being elected to this office, Kim served as Thurston County Elections Director for nearly a decade and served three terms as the elected Thurston County Auditor (2001-2013). As head of one of the most multi-faceted offices in state government, Secretary Wyman responsibilities included overseeing state and local elections, corporation and charity filings, the Washington State Library, the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library, and the Washington State Archives.

Dr. Nancy López 

Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico, Associate VP-Division for Equity and Inclusion, and Director/co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Race & Social Justice 

Dr. Nancy López is professor of sociology. Dr. López co-founded/directs the Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice and she is the founding coordinator of the New Mexico Statewide Race, Gender, Class Data Policy Consortium (Visit: race.unm.edu). Dr. López currently serves as Associate VP for DEI. Her scholarship and teaching are guided by the insights of intersectionality–the simultaneity of tribal status/settler colonialism race/structural racism, gender/heteropatriarchy, class/capitalism, ethnicity/nativism, sexuality/heterosexism as systems of oppression/resistance across a variety of social outcomes (education, health, employment, wealth and housing) and the importance of developing contextualized solutions that advance justice. Dr. López has been recognized for her contributions to engaged scholarship through the American Sociological Association William Foote Whyte Distinguished Career Award for Sociological Practice and Public Sociology. Dr. López current research funded by the WT Grant Foundation and Hewlett Foundation includes a mixed method study in three research practice partnerships that examine the role of ethnic studies curriculum and culturally relevant pedagogy in reducing complex intersectional inequalities in high school. She received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a project entitled “Employing and Intersectionality Framework in Revising Office of Management and Budget Standards for Collecting Administrative Race and Ethnicity Data.” She has served on over 75 PhD/MA committees and she has given over 130 seminars on at national conferences, invited lectures and community gatherings.

Lia Sifuentes Davis 

Senior Litigation Attorney at Disability Rights Texas 

Lia Sifuentes Davis is a Senior Litigation Attorney at Disability Rights Texas, the federally-mandated protection and advocacy organization for people with disabilities in Texas. She’s a dedicated public interest attorney, and has spent her entire legal career working in public interest law.  She graduated from the University of Texas School of Law and Brown University. She is a member of the Texas Employment Lawyers Association and the Disability Rights Bar Association.

Lia provides direct legal representation to clients with disabilities in the areas of employment discrimination, accessibility, and voting. Her work focuses on the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and she leads the voting rights team at DRTx in its litigation, amicus, and policy practice to address voting issues and laws impacting people with disabilities. In addition to voting rights work, she litigates employment disability discrimination cases and ADA Title II and III cases in state and federal court, and at the appellate level at the Texas Third Court of Appeals, the Texas Supreme Court, and the Fifth Circuit.

Lia is actively involved in the filing against the Texas Voting Law Senate Bill 1. “People with disabilities, who make up 20 percent of the U.S. population, already face significant barriers to exercising their legal right to vote, such as physically inaccessible polling sites, election workers refusing to provide accommodations, mail-in ballots that cannot be used by people who are blind, and more,” “SB1 is a discriminatory law that creates more unnecessary barriers and silences the voices of Texans with disabilities as well as Texans of color.”

HOST & SPONSORS 

ChIPs would like to extend our thanks to Knobbe Martens for sponsoring this event.