Pro Bono Lawyers Work in Service of Democracy

By Ceridwen Cherry, VoteRiders Legal Director – October 23, 2024

October 20-26 is the American Bar Association’s 2024 National Celebration of Pro Bono. For the past 16 years, legal organizations across the United States have participated in the National Celebration of Pro Bono to draw attention to the need for pro bono participation and to thank the attorneys and legal staff who have volunteered their time pro bono in the last year. 

This year’s theme is “Making Justice a Reality in Our Communities,” which fits with the work our many pro bono legal volunteers do each year to help support VoteRiders’ mission to ensure that no eligible voter is prevented from casting a ballot that counts due to voter ID laws. 

One of my favorite parts about serving as VoteRiders’ Legal Director is getting to work with the attorneys and law firms who donate their time to VoteRiders. Since its founding in 2012, VoteRiders has benefitted from extensive pro bono legal support, developing partnerships with more than 15 law firms. So, in honor of this year’s Pro Bono Celebration, I wanted to share some of the incredible work our pro bono partners have been doing this year to help support our mission. 

Since joining the VoteRiders team last year, my focus has been on updating and expanding our website resources and Voter ID Information Cards to ensure we can continue to provide accurate and up-to-date information to as many voters as possible nationwide. This large-scale project would not have been possible without the extensive legal research support we’ve received from several firms and the assistance the Law Firm Antiracism Alliance provided in connecting us to eager volunteers at those firms.

For example:

• Perkins Coie researched the specific identification requirements for trans, non-binary, and overseas voters. 
• Mayer Brown researched whether states accept a suspended license as a form of voter ID and what public assistance IDs can be used to vote. 
• Paul, Weiss is working on a 50-state survey to determine how hospitalized voters can still vote, giving our Helpline volunteers the information they need to respond to one of our most frequent Election Day questions.

This year invaluable support from law firm partners has also allowed us to expand our voter ID assistance efforts. We are especially grateful to Ballard Spahr and Willkie Farr & Gallagher who have been helping voters access their birth certificates, which can be a confusing, time-consuming, and frustrating process. 

Another area where pro bono legal support has been invaluable this year is in submitting public record requests. One of the best ways to find voters who don’t have the necessary ID to vote is to request lists from election officials of either voters who had a provisional ballot rejected due to lack of identification or who did not use an accepted ID at the time they registered. We can then contact those voters through our phone banking, text banking, and letter-writing efforts. However, submitting and processing these requests can be complicated and tedious. This year, both Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Goodwin Proctor have provided tremendous support for our public records requests and allowed us to reach voters in a wide range of our priority states.

Several firms have also welcomed their attorneys and staff to train and serve as VoteRiders Voter ID Assistance Volunteers. These in-person and virtual volunteers devote one to three hours per week, working one-on-one with individuals who need help tracking down documents, making and getting to appointments, navigating confusing and complicated bureaucratic processes, and covering the fees required to secure a voter ID. 

And finally, this year and every year, we are incredibly grateful to our longtime partner Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe, who generously enabled partner Marc Bauer to dedicate a significant portion of his time to supporting VoteRiders’ on a pro bono basis as our Outside General Counsel.

In this home stretch to the 2024 General Election, we are incredibly grateful to all the firms and attorneys who have donated their time, allowing us to provide free ID assistance and information to as many voters as possible in this critical election year. We are already excited about the pro bono partnerships we have in the works for 2025 because here at VoteRiders, we don’t believe in “off years.” Every year is an opportunity to build a stronger and more representative democracy.

Ceridwen Cherry has extensive experience litigating voting rights cases throughout the country, including challenges to voter identification and voter registration requirements. She is also a subject matter expert on the DMV and public assistance provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Most recently, Ceridwen served as Senior Staff Attorney in the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.