{"id":22467,"date":"2024-09-27T20:34:44","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T20:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.voteriders.org\/?p=22467"},"modified":"2024-09-27T20:34:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T20:34:44","slug":"time-democracy-defender-lauren-kunis-executive-director-of-voteriders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.voteriders.org\/time-democracy-defender-lauren-kunis-executive-director-of-voteriders\/","title":{"rendered":"TIME: Democracy Defender Lauren Kunis, Executive Director of VoteRiders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BY <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/author\/nik-popli\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NIK POPLI<\/a>, TIME \u2014 SEPTEMBER 19, 2024<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_22468\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-22468\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-22468 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.voteriders.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/LaurenKunis-300x200.webp\" alt=\"Lauren Kunis, VoteRiders, Democracy Defender\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.voteriders.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/LaurenKunis-300x200.webp 300w, https:\/\/www.voteriders.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/LaurenKunis-1024x683.webp 1024w, https:\/\/www.voteriders.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/LaurenKunis-768x512.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.voteriders.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/LaurenKunis.webp 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-22468\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo-Illustration by TIME; Courtesy Lauren Kunis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"self-baseline px-0 font-pt-serif text-17px leading-7 tracking-0.5px\">More Americans voted in the 2020 election than in any other in U.S. history. In the four years since, 18 states have enacted new or stricter voter ID requirements to cast a ballot, warns Lauren Kunis, the executive director and CEO of VoteRiders. \u201cThe history of our country is one of expanding access to the ballot box over time,\u201d says Kunis. \u201cSadly we are seeing the reversal of that trend right now on the voter ID front in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"self-baseline px-0 font-pt-serif text-17px leading-7 tracking-0.5px\">VoteRiders is a non-partisan organization dedicated to ensuring that every eligible voter can navigate such regulations and access the ballot box. The group has its work cut out for it in 2024, as an unprecedented 38 states now have voter ID laws in place. Republican-led states, in particular, have adopted increasingly stringent regulations as lawmakers have argued, with little evidence, that voter fraud is a widespread problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"self-baseline px-0 font-pt-serif text-17px leading-7 tracking-0.5px\">Nearly 50 million Americans do not have an active ID that reflects their current name and address. For those living in states with stringent voter ID laws, the result is a confusing patchwork of regulations that can leave even the most determined voter at a loss. \u201cWe&#8217;re in a place of really unprecedented challenge when it comes to voting rights and voting access,\u201d says Kunis, who has led the organization since 2021.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7017491\/lauren-kunis-democracy-defenders\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read the full article at TIME<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY NIK POPLI, TIME \u2014 SEPTEMBER 19, 2024 More Americans voted in the 2020 election than in any other in U.S. history. In the four years since, 18 states have enacted new or stricter voter ID requirements to cast a ballot, warns Lauren Kunis, the executive director and CEO of VoteRiders. \u201cThe history of our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":22471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[407,406,308,389,339,328,394],"class_list":["post-22467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-voteriders-in-the-news","tag-award","tag-democracy-defender","tag-voter-id","tag-voter-id-help","tag-voter-id-laws","tag-voteriders","tag-voteriders-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.4 (Yoast SEO v26.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lauren Kunis: Defending Democracy Amid Rising Voter ID Laws<\/title>\n<meta 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