To prepare for November, the group will place an emphasis on attracting a wide base of support, May said. It has already recruited volunteers from Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government in addition to HLS, he said.
“The number of law students we’re hoping to get can make a big difference,” he said. “No, we’re not going to be able to prevent every voting problem that happens, but I think we’re going to be able to make a big dent.”
May said Just Democracy hopes to have 2,000 volunteers working out of 50 or more chapters at law schools around the country by the time polls open in November. In order to finance this expansion, he said the group hopes to court corporate sponsorship as well as funds from the legal community.
For now, though, the group has confirmed chapters at only 10 schools, including New York University, Stanford University and the University of Chicago. And it has yet to determine a definite list of “high-risk” polling areas where volunteers will focus their efforts.
“We’re definitely still in outreach mode,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said the project had its genesis at a recent Law School panel on voter participation, where a panelist suggested the idea. O’Brien raised the idea with electoral scholar Gerken in late January, she said, and later discussed it with Tribe, who teaches the course on constitutional law that both she and May are currently taking.
By the beginning of this month, O’Brien said she had turned to “good old-fashioned viral marketing” to disseminate the Just Democracy idea to other schools via e-mail.
As more and more law schools open up chapters, O’Brien said she hopes a “lean,” decentralized structure of student leaders trained in local voting law will be prepared to organize thousands of volunteers come November.
May and O’Brien said they hope to set up a conference of volunteers at Harvard this fall to prepare for the election and provide basic training in the complexities of voting law and its implementation.
By election day, they said they intend to facilitate Just Democracy chapters in 49 of the 50 states, with the exception of Alaska, which they said lacks a law school. But May expressed optimism at rumors of a law school opening in that state next semester.
“Maybe we’ll get in on the ground floor there,” he said.
—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.