The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

In a speech last week in Austin, Texas, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder affirmed his commitment to protecting the right to vote and indicated that the Department of Justice will be thoroughly reviewing new state voting laws to determine whether they are discriminatory.

A new study from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law finds that as many as five million voters will be adversely affected in the 2012 election by new restrictive state voting laws.

At a Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights hearing last week, senators and civil and human rights organizations expressed concern over what one witness called an assault on voting rights comparable to the Jim Crow era.

The hearing focused on the recent wave of state legislation that will restrict voters’ access to the polls, disenfranchising millions of voters.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while in Memphis, Tenn., defending the fundamental rights to fair pay, safe working conditions, and an equal voice in solidarity with more than one thousand city sanitation workers on strike for better wages and benefits. This week, the civil and human rights community remembers and honors King’s sacrifice and commitment to economic justice and workers rights by uniting with union members, students, and other advocates for the “We Are One” campaign.

This election season, Election Protection (EP), the nation's largest non-partisan voter protection coalition, will be using Twitter as part of its election monitoring activities.

EP is encouraging voters to send Tweets if they are experiencing problems at the polls such as "long lines, voter intimidation, suspicious behavior, voting machine malfunctions, and registration errors."