Protecting the Vote: The Consent of the Governed in the Age of New Jim Crow

Join the Department of Social Sciences for this Great Problems, Great Minds seminar series event featuring Alexander Konetzki.

Voter disenfranchisement remains a serious problem that American lawyers will be combating in a matter of days. Protecting the vote used to mean just making sure that people weren't denied the opportunity to rightfully exercise their franchise. But in an age of disinformation, and amidst growing questions about the legitimacy of American government, protecting the vote means something much larger: it means building a participatory representative democracy suitable for the 21st century, and defending it against enemies foreign and domestic who would do it harm.

Konetzki is a lawyer who served on the voter protection staff of President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. He is the founder and managing partner of Alexandros LLC, which provides legal counsel to families and entrepreneurs in Chicago. He previously worked as a researcher at New America and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and also worked on Capitol Hill. He holds a Juris Doctor from DePaul University, where he was a legal researcher at the International Weapons Control Center and the International Human Rights Law Institute. His academic work has focused on making the institutions of government more democratic.