Panelists for the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act Hearing in Los Angeles, California on September 27, 2005 Joaquin Avila (Click here to view Testimony) Assistant Professor, Seattle University School of Law Mr. Avila is currently an Assistant Professor at the Seattle University School of Law. In his extensive career as legal advocate for minority rights, Professor Joaquin Avila has challenged discriminatory practices in the areas of voting rights, employment, education and immigration. He has served as lead counsel in several important voting rights lawsuits involving challenges against discriminatory election structures at the congressional, state and local government levels. In 2001, Professor Avila spearheaded the efforts to secure the passage of the California State Voting Rights Act, the only state voting rights act in the nation. In 1982, Professor Avila testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the extension of the Voting Rights Act. From 1982 to 1985 he served as president and general counsel of MALDEF, and was responsible for the formulation and implementation of a national Latino civil rights agenda that resulted in major legislative and legal victories. In 1985, he established a private practice, focusing exclusively on protecting minority voting rights. As a nationally recognized minority voting rights expert, Professor Avila taught courses at the University of California/Berkeley, University of Texas, and UCLA schools of law. In 1996, he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in recognition of his work in the voting rights area. In the same year, he received the Vanguard Public Foundation's Social Justice Sabbatical for his work in providing political access to minority communities. Professor Avila received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his law degree from Harvard Law School. Rosalind Gold Senior Director, Policy Research & Advocacy, NALEO Education Fund Rosalind Gold serves as Senior Director of Policy, Research and Advocacy with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, where she has worked for over a decade on policy analysis and research for the naturalization and Latino political empowerment efforts of the organization. Her areas of expertise include election reform, the decennial Census and the restructuring of the nation’s immigration bureaucracy. Ms. Gold received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. from Pomona College in Claremont, California. J. Morgan Kousser Professor of History and Social Science, California Institute of Technology Professor J. Morgan Kousser currently teaches History and Social Science at the California Institute of Technology. His extensive body of work centers on minority voting rights, the history of education, and the legal and political aspects of race relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. Professor Kousser has served as an expert witness in 21 federal and state voting rights cases and as a consultant in 8 others. In 1981, he testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives about the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. He was the principal expert witness on the intent issue for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund in the Los Angeles Supervisors’ redistricting case, Garza v. County of Los Angeles (1990) and for the U.S. Department of Justice in U.S. v. Memphis (1991). Garza resulted in the election of the first Latino in 115 years to the nation’s largest county governing body; the Memphis case resulted in the election of the first African-American mayor in the history of the city. He was also an expert witness for the NAACP-Legal Defense Fund in Shaw v. Hunt (1994), the North Carolina “racial gerrymandering” case, for the Justice Department in its Texas counterpart, Vera v. Richards (1994), and for MALDEF in Cano v. Davis, the 2002 California congressional and legislative redistricting case. Professor Kousser is the author of numerous publications, including The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (1974) and Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction (1999), which was co-winner of the 1999 Lillian Smith Award of the Southern Regional Council and of the Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association. Educated at Princeton and Yale, he has been a visiting professor at Michigan, Harvard, and Claremont Graduate University. In 1984-85, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford. Since 1969, his primary affiliation has been with Caltech. Eugene Lee (Click here to view Testimony) Staff Attorney, Voting Rights Project, Asian Pacific American Legal Center Eugene Lee is a staff attorney in the Voting Rights Project of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (APALC). Mr. Lee’s work focuses on securing the rights of API voters guaranteed by law, including overseeing poll monitoring efforts, and engaging in policy advocacy at the local, state and federal levels. In addition to his poll monitoring work and policy advocacy, Mr. Lee works with local and state coalitions focused on promoting access to and participation in elections, and provides training to community-based organizations on the language assistance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Founded in 1983, APALC has become the largest organization in the country focused on providing multilingual, culturally sensitive legal services, education, and civil rights support to one of the nation’s fastest growing populations. APALC is affiliated with the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC) in Washington, D.C. For over two decades, APALC has engaged in advocacy, community education and poll monitoring to secure the voting rights of Asian Pacific Americans guaranteed by law. Mr. Lee received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his law degree from Columbia Law School. Eun Sook Lee (Click here to view Testimony) Executive Director, National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC) Eun Sook Lee is the Executive Director of NAKASEC, which was founded in 1994 to project a progressive Korean American voice on critical civil rights issues through education, organizing, and advocacy. Previously, Ms. Lee was the executive director of Korean American Women In Need (KAN-WIN), a bilingual domestic violence service agency. She is also a board member of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, the National Immigration Forum, and the Los Angeles Mayor's Office for Immigrant Affairs. Conny McCormack (Click here to view Testimony) Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, Los Angeles County As the Registrar of Voters in Los Angeles County, Conny McCormack is responsible for conducting elections for the largest electoral jurisdiction in the U.S., composed of over 4 million registered voters and 5,000 voting precincts. She conducts federal, state, and county elections and, via contract, conducts or supports local elections for 88 cities, 100 school districts, and 149 special districts. Ms. McCormack possesses an extensive background and has spoken widely on issues surrounding the election administration process, including the use of voting systems and election reform initiatives. Prior to her position as the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters, McCormack served as the Registrar of Voters for San Diego County, CA and as the Elections Administrator for Dallas County, TX. In addition, Ms. McCormack has served as a member of the California Secretary of State’s Voting Systems Advisory Panel (2001-2003) and is currently a member of the Election Assistance Commission Standards Board and the Election Center Task Force on Election Reform. Robert Rubin (Click here to view Testimony) Legal Director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco Robert Rubin, a civil rights attorney for the past 25 years, specializes in the areas of immigration and voting rights. He directs the Committee's voting rights project and secured the first injunction in the nation ordering a state to comply with the National Voter Registration Act ("motor voter" law). In another case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Rubin was counsel to Latino voters in Monterey County who were opposed to at-large judicial elections that diluted their voting power. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the at-large system violated the interests of Latino voters and rejected the State's argument that the at-large system was immune from review under the Voting Rights Act. Most recently, he was counsel to minority voters challenging the elimination of community-based voting precincts during the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election. After temporary injunctive relief was ordered, the voting precincts were reinstated. Mr. Rubin has appeared on numerous occasions before the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress where he has testified regarding state legislative redistricting plans. Prior to joining the Lawyers' Committee, he was the ACLU staff counsel in Jackson, Mississippi Mr. Rubin has lectured extensively (including adjunct positions at Stanford Law School and University of California School of Law, Boalt Hall) and currently serves as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law where he teaches a constitutional law seminar. Debbie Hsu Siah Fund Developer, Chinese Information and Service Center Debbie Hsu Siah currently works as a Fund Developer at the Chinese Information and Service Center, a nonprofit , social service agency. As a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Fellow at the University of Washington, Ms. Siah documented voter access issues and conducted voter outreach projects for local nonprofit organizations. Since July 2002, Debbie has helped coordinate the King County Section 203 Community Coalition which monitors bilingual voter access in King County, Washington. Ms. Siah received her Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs and her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Irvine. John Trasviña Senior Vice President for Law and Policy, (MALDEF) For the past two decades, John Trasviña has played a major policy role at local and federal levels on immigration and civil rights matters affecting immigrants, women and minority communities. He has written and spoken nationally on topics including immigrant workplace rights, English Only, constitutional law, immigration history, diversity and education. Prior to re-joining MALDEF, Mr. Trasviña was the Western States Regional Director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. In 2002-2004, he was Director of the Discrimination Research Center in Berkeley and Los Angeles and taught Immigration Law at Stanford Law School. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Mr. Trasviña to be Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices. As Special Counsel, he headed the federal government's only office devoted solely to immigrant workplace rights and was the highest ranking Latino attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice. In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Trasviña was General Counsel and Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and the legislative counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF). A native of San Francisco, Mr. Trasviña is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School. Prior to coming to Los Angeles to accept the Civil Rights Commission post, he was a member of the San Francisco Elections Commission, president of the Harvard Club of San Francisco, a board member of the La Raza Lawyers Association, CORO of Northern California, Lowell High School Alumni Association and League of Women Voters and a founding board member of the Pacific Coast Immigration Museum. He is now on the Board of the Harvard Club of Southern California and a Member of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights for the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. o so for a long time, she say Back to main page