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Voter identification laws are one of the key battlegrounds in making sure that all Americans have access to the ballot

Labor organizations Working America and the AFL-CIO have stepped up their efforts to protect the rights of Americans. Working America has opened up two new regional offices in order to expand their efforts to assist working families on jobsites that are not unionized.

Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has opened in two new locations as it expands its efforts to organize and mobilize working-class people who don’t have the benefit of a union on the job.
The offices—in Falls Church, Va., and St. Louis—will add to the more than a dozen states across the country where organizers knock on doors, meet and organize each day with thousands of working people.

“There is no replacement for face-to-face conversations to build a movement of working people,” said Working America Communications Director Christian Norton. “We plan to hit the ground running in Virginia and Missouri to work with our labor and progressive allies and to take our country and our economy back from corporate lobbyists and their political buddies.”

Working America has 90,000 members in Virginia and 77,000 members in Missouri currently. Working America also works in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and more.

Meanwhile, Working America's parent organization, the AFL-CIO is expanding its focus on registering voters and protecting the rights of voters, who have been targeted by conservatives in the last few years, through voter identification laws and other vote suppression laws.

The AFL-CIO today announced a far-reaching, multi-partner campaign to register voters, ensure they can cast their ballots without intimidation and follow through to make sure those votes are counted. Speaking at a press conference here in Washington, D.C., AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said this campaign represents the union movement’s most aggressive push ever because: "the attacks we are seeing on the right to vote are unprecedented.:

“Over the past several months, the AFL-CIO has been working with our affiliates to ensure that registered voters are able to cast their votes without intimidation and to ensure that their votes are counted,” Holt Baker said, with a focus on Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Some of those partners joined Holt Baker today, including NAACP President Ben Jealous, National Council of La Raza’s Clarissa Martinez-De-Castro and Generational Alliance’s Carmen Berkley.

AFL-CIO outreach will address such challenges registered voters face as inadequate election administration, lack of access to required photo ID and intimidation and dirty tricks on Election Day. The AFL-CIO website MyVoteMyRight.org offers a resource hub for voters, which includes state-by-state fact sheets on voting laws and voter registrations rules. The site offers a story feature that allows voters to submit their stories online to be gathered as a resource.

Learn a lot more about the efforts at the new AFL-CIO website.