Our Staff
As Project Vote’s Field Director, Amy Busefink is responsible for the development and execution of field activities across Project Vote’s many program areas. Working with the Election Administration program, she works to develop field strategies for moving issues in several states, including the preregistration of 16 and 17-year-old citizens and voter registration on high school campuses. Over the last two years, Ms. Busefink has participated in the successful fight against legislation that creates barriers to voters, including photo ID efforts in Missouri. She continues to develop voter participation and voter registration field programs, utilizing new and exciting technology for Get-Out-the-Vote efforts.
Ms. Busefink came to Project Vote as its national voter registration director in June 2006, when she assumed responsibility for Project Vote’s 2006 voter registration program. She ran field operations for Project Votes 2008 voter registration program, which collected 1.1 million applications. She came to Project Vote with four years of grassroots organizing experience, including managing the North Florida field program of the successful 2004 Florida Minimum Wage Campaign. Ms. Busefink graduated from Florida State University in 2003 with a B.A. in Political Science. She resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Daniel Charlton joined Project Vote in August of 2009 as Field Manager, working to organize and execute voter participation and advocacy programs across the country and representing Project Vote at the 501(c)(3) civic engagement tables in Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. With Project Vote, Mr. Charlton organized a pilot volunteer voter registration drive in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and spearheaded Project Vote’s upcoming report on the conditions of voting in Virginia. In August 2010 he was promoted to Operations Manager. Mr. Charlton came to Project Vote with the experience from working on several different issue and electoral field campaigns across America, and has also worked as a facilitator for a youth leadership program and an automotive mechanic. In December 2007, Mr. Charlton graduated from the James Madison College of Public Affairs at Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and a specialization in Social Relations and Policy.
Alice Cochran coordinates program outreach and field research across a number of key Project Vote program areas. After joining Project Vote in 2008 as a regional director of quality control for the voter registration drive, Ms. Cochran continues to work with the voter registration field program and is responsible for the development and implementation of all Quality Control trainings and materials. She serves as an integral member of the Public Agency Registration and Election Administration programs, and also provides logistical coordinator for the organization. Prior to joining Project Vote, Ms. Cochran worked with non-profit, grassroots organization, ACORN, the African Community Center, a Colorado refugee resettlement organization, and taught English as a foreign language in Rome, Italy. Ms. Cochran graduated from Colorado State University with a B.A. in International Studies and completed a Semester at Sea, a global student travel abroad program. She currently resides in Washington, DC.
Rosemary Englert joined Project Vote in 2009 as a Legal Fellow and assists with a variety of legal and legislative tasks. She recently wrote the Project Vote policy paper on No Match, No Vote policies, is updating the state voter registration guides, and submitted written testimony and letters on Project Vote's behalf to states considering preregistration policies. She is also involved in Project Vote's litigation efforts, researching issues and drafting and editing documents for the court.
Ms. Englert graduated from The George Washington University Law School in May 2009 and she previously worked on voting rights issues at the Department of Justice Voting Section and researched campaign finance policy as a research assistant for a GW law professor.
Brandon
Frazier joined Project Vote in August 2010 as Director of Media Relations. A
media and public relations professional with a background in non-profit and
issue-centered communications, Mr. Frazier has secured story and segment
placements in news outlets throughout the country for multiple
nationally-based industry associations. Prior to joining Project Vote, Mr.
Frazier served as U.S. Communications Manager for the International Fund for
Animal Welfare, and in communications capacities for the Student Conservation
Association, the National Society of Black Engineers, and ABC News in New
York City. A native of Columbus, Ohio and graduate of Kentucky State
University, Mr. Frazier resides in Washington, DC.
Jody Herman has consulted for Project Vote’s Public Agency Registration and Election Administration Programs since November 2007. She provides research services, including field investigation management and data collection and analysis, and has authored or co-authored several Project Vote publications, including Representational Bias in the 2008 Electorate. Dr. Herman's work and research outside of Project Vote has focused on poverty, welfare, and LGBT and women's rights. She has worked with non-profit research, advocacy, and direct-service organizations in the United States and Mexico. Dr. Herman holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from The George Washington University, where she earned her M.A. in Public Policy.
Douglas Hess is a research consultant for Project Vote on demographic and election data and an expert on implementation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). He is the original author of Project Vote's popular reports on the 2006 and 2008 election entitled Representational Bias (the most recent version co-authored with Jody Herman). From 1994 to 1996 he directed Project Vote’s NVRA Implementation Project which produced some of the first reports on the impact of the NVRA and groundbreaking litigation that registered hundreds of thousands of individuals. In addition to his work with Project Vote, Mr. Hess has worked for a variety of local, national, and international non-profit organizations in the U.S. and Haiti. His work over the past twenty years has focused on political participation and civil rights, as well as community development, child nutrition, and anti-poverty policy. His undergraduate degree is from Grinnell College and he has a Master of Arts degree in policy studies from The Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Hess is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University. Mr. Hess has also served as an adjunct faculty member in political science at Grinnell College and George Washington University.
As Deputy Director of Development, Jennifer Jacquot-DeVries leads Project Vote's development department, and is responsible for cultivating and stewarding relationships with supporting foundations and individual donors. Ms. Jacquot-DeVries manages grant application and reporting deadlines, writes and oversees the production of fundraising materials, conducts prospect research, and maintains the organization’s recently refined donor database and filing systems. Ms. Jacquot-DeVries also works to facilitate positive relationships with supporting foundations and individual donors, assisting in scheduling and coordination of meetings and events where necessary. She is also the organization’s Minnesota representative for State Voices. Prior to joining Project Vote full-time in November 2009, Ms. Jacquot-DeVries was a fundraising consultant to Project Vote during the historic 2008 election year. She previously worked for Minneapolis Public Schools and has volunteered with the Foundation for Immigrant Resources and Education (FIRE) and AmeriCorps. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University in May 2008.
Teresa James is an Election Counsel with Project Vote, engaged in the Election Administration, Public Agency Voter Registration, and Research programs. Since joining Project Vote in February 2006, Ms. James has worked to further Project Vote’s core mission of ensuring that America’s electorate looks like America: diverse and actively involved. As part of that work she has authored issue briefs, including Caging Democracy: A 50-year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters and Your Ballot’s in the Mail: Vote by Mail and Absentee Voting. In addition to research and writing, she has been active in several successful voting rights lawsuits, including Project Vote v. Blackwell, Project Vote v. Madison, and Harkless v. Brunner, and other cases related to the NVRA and the Help America Vote Act. Before joining Project Vote, Ms. James was a senior legal editor at LexisNexis. Her editing experience followed the practice of law at Legal Aid, the law firm Spike & Meckler, and in a private practice. She has also served on the boards of the Oberlin ACLU and the Lorain County Legal Aid Society. Ms. James is a graduate of Oberlin College and of Case Western Reserve Law School.
Nicole Kovite returned to Project Vote in 2008 as Election Counsel and Director of the Public Agency Voter Registration Program. As director, Ms. Kovite manages Project Vote’s efforts to advocate for enforcement of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 through technical assistance and litigation across the country. Ms. Kovite has been instrumental in representing Project Vote as plaintiffs’ counsel in NVRA lawsuits in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and New Mexico, and in providing technical assistance to state officials in Colorado and New Jersey, resulting in comprehensive NVRA compliance plans in both those states.
Previously, Ms. Kovite worked for Project Vote in 2004 as the Washington state Election Administration project manager, where she succeeded in helping to reverse an illegal citizenship checkbox requirement to registration, resulting in roughly 2,500 more registered voters in the historically tight election. Ms. Kovite is an attorney licensed in Washington state, where she worked for Scheer & Zehnder LLP, a civil litigation defense firm, the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney, and most recently for the King County prosecutor’s office where she tried and won 12 jury trials. Prior to her work as an attorney, Ms. Kovite was staff for the Unemployment Law Project in Seattle, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 925 in Seattle, and the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC. Ms. Kovite is a national member of The Order of the Barristers.
Erin Ferns Lee is the Communications Manager at Project
Vote. Since August 2006, Ms. Lee has helped shape Project Vote’s current
methods of communicating important election administration issues and
Project Vote’s work. Ms. Lee has authored several memos and briefs
assessing election legislation and election policy, emphasizing youth
voting issues since early 2008. In particular, she leads Project Vote’s
Election Legislation project, a bill-tracking service that covers a
range of issues on the federal and state levels that includes the
widely-read weekly Election Legislation eDigest and bi-annual Threats
& Opportunities legislative assessment memos. She also
manages and serves as lead writer on Project Vote’s blog, Voting
Matters and produces the monthly newsletter, Strengthening
Democracy. Prior to joining Project Vote’s staff, Ms. Lee graduated with
honors from the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego
State University. While studying at SDSU, she interned with the city's
leading social and economic justice research and advocacy organization,
Center on Policy Initiatives and UNITE HERE, Local 30. Ms. Lee is based
in Los Angeles.
Michael McDunnah joined Project Vote in 2008, and oversees all aspects of the organization's communications efforts and strategy, including managing media relations, overseeing online communications, and serving as chief editor on all publications. His prior experience includes nearly ten years of fundraising and communications work for nonprofits, including serving as the Development & Communications Director for Rainbow House, a Chicago domestic violence agency, and over five years at IFF, the Midwest’s largest nonprofit CDFI, where he helped secure foundation, corporate, and government grants and program-related investments. A graduate of the Johnston Center for Integrated Studies at the University of Redlands, Mr. McDunnah resides in Washington, D.C.
Brian Mellor is Project Vote’s Senior Counsel and manages Project Vote’s litigation staff. He has worked with Project Vote since 2005 litigating cases, administering voter participation programs, and providing corporate advice and services. Mr. Mellor helped develop and implement Project Vote’s voter registration drives in 2005, 2006, and 2007-2008. In that role, he wrote the quality control manual, oversaw the national quality control program, and prepared material used to defend the efforts from reprehensible attacks by partisan organizations and the media. As co-counsel, Mr. Mellor has litigated cases that that overturned onerous restrictions on voter registration drives. He has also successfully challenged other statutory or regulatory obstacles to voter participation. He has also co-counseled cases enforcing Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act that requires states to offer voter registration opportunities to public assistance clients. Prior to working with Project Vote, Mr. Mellor was a local field director on a voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaign in Florida, worked with a labor union and housing advocacy organization, and worked as a community organizer in a number of communities across the country. Mr. Mellor holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D. from Boston University.
Lorraine C. Minnite joined Project Vote as Director of Research in January 2010, after serving a term on the board of directors and authoring the 2007 Project Vote report The Politics of Voter Fraud. For nearly ten years Dr. Minnite taught American and urban politics at Barnard College, and prior to that she was the Associate Director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. An experienced researcher concerned with issues of inequality, social and racial justice, political conflict, and institutional change, Dr. Minnite has published on various aspects of political participation, immigration, voting behavior and urban politics. She is the author of The Myth of Voter Fraud, published by Cornell University Press (2010), and, with Frances Fox Piven and Margaret Groarke, a co-author of Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters, published by The New Press in 2009. In her role as Research Director, Dr. Minnite is expanding Project Vote's research agenda into the causes of low voter turnout and the consequences for American democracy of the resulting class bias of the electorate. Dr. Minnite holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the City University of New York.
Michael Richards is the election administration manager for the state of Florida and serves as Project Vote’s representative for 501(c)(3) civic engagement tables in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon. Since April 2009, Mr. Richards’ primary duties have been to expand awareness of voting rights-related issues in the states in which he is involved and to push for the expansion and protection of the right to vote of American minorities. Recently, Mr. Richards was successful in gaining the bi-partisan support of Florida legislators resulting in the filing of a High School Student Voter Education bill, which mandated that Supervisors of Elections and School Board officials have to preregister and register high school students to vote. He also contributes to the Election Legislation project, monitoring and reporting on legislative activities in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Mr. Richards previously served roughly 200,000 residents as an aide to an Orange County commissioner, performing such duties as tracking bills in the Florida Legislature, orchestrating public meetings and attending community events on behalf of the elected official. Before then, he was a translator and editor for the geopolitical magazine, Heartland, an Italian Eurasian Review. Mr. Richards earned his B.A. in Italian and International Affairs and his M.S. in International Affairs concentrating in Human Rights from Florida State University. While studying, he performed two internships at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy in the Political / Military Affairs Office and Public Affairs Office.
Estelle Rogers, an attorney, has been Project Vote’s Director of Advocacy since January 2010. In this position, she coordinates the organization’s policy work on both state and federal levels, including interacting directly with legislators and staff, writing testimony and public education materials, and building coalitions with other organizations. Prior to joining the Project Vote staff, Ms. Rogers spent several years as a part-time consultant to the organization. Her work included representing Project Vote at meetings and legislative hearings, preparing a voting rights agenda for submission to the Presidential Transition Team in 2008-2009, and authoring The National Voter Registration Act at Fifteen: A Report to Congress. Ms. Roger’s work on civic engagement issues began in 2004, when she served as special counsel to America’s Families United, supervising the verification of thousands of new voter registrations in 65 counties in 17 states. In 2005-2006, she was a senior staff attorney with Advancement Project, continuing her legal work on voter registration and election administration issues. She serves in the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates and is a member of the ABA’s Standing Committee on Election Law. She also serves on the board of the Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, an organization providing legal services to immigrant detainees in the Washington, DC area.
Steve Rosenfeld began working with Project Vote in 2010, bringing with him nearly two decades' experience as an author, analyst, reporter, and editor specializing in voting rights issues. In addition to Project Vote, Mr. Rosenfeld has served as a consultant to several advocacy groups and foundations; he was the author of Project Vote's 2010 case study, Paperless Registration: Innovations in Three States, and recently worked with the Pew Center's Election Initiative on their forthcoming voter registration modernization plan. Mr. Rosenfeld covered the 2008 election as a Senior Fellow with AlterNet.org, worked as press secretary for several political campaigns, and has served as a writer, producer, and reporter with several publications and media outlets including NPR and Air America Radio. He is the author of several books, including Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting. Mr. Rosenfeld resides in San Francisco.
Niyati Shah works as Election Counsel to Project Vote. As Election
Counsel, Ms. Shah litigates and advocates for compliance with the National
Voter Registration Act of 1993 across the country. Previously, Ms.
Shah worked for the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs
litigating against deceptive and misleading trade practices and at Legal
Services of Northwest Jersey as a family, consumer, and housing law attorney. Ms. Shah is licensed to practice law in
New York and New Jersey. She is a
graduate of Rutgers University School of Law – Camden and obtained her
undergraduate degree from American University.
Elizabeth Shen is a rising second-year law student at American University Washington College of Law. During law school, she served on the Executive Board for Action for Human Rights, which utilizes experiential learning to provide pro bono services to underserved populations outside of the D.C. area. Prior to joining Project Vote, she interned at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia with the Honorable Judge Ann O’Regan Keary. Ms. Shen graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in Legal Studies.
Michael Slater came to Project Vote in 2004 with more than a decade’s experience in community, labor and faith-based organizing. As Deputy Director, Mr. Slater helped build Project Vote's Election Administration program, and led successful efforts to overturn restrictive voter registration laws in seven states, including the landmark Project Vote v. Blackwell case. Mr. Slater was promoted to Executive Director in 2008, and in the months leading up to the historic 2008 election supervised one of the largest and most successful voter registration efforts in the nation’s history. In the past two years Mr. Slater has overseen the dramatic growth of Project Vote’s Election Administration, Litigation, and Research programs, transforming the organization into one of the nation’s leading voting rights and advocacy organizations. Under his guidance, the Public Agency Voter Registration Project has taken a nationwide leadership role in enforcing the National Voter Registration Act, including major litigation victories in Ohio and Missouri to ensure those states are registering their low-income public assistance clients. Through the expanded Research Department, Mr. Slater has conceived and overseen the writing and release of dozens of policy papers and reports, including Representational Bias in the 2008 Electorate and The NVRA at Fifteen: A Report to Congress. Mr. Slater has contributed to the passage of positive election legislation in several states, authored or edited numerous articles and publications on election policy, and is frequently called upon to testify on election issues. He splits his time between Washington, D.C. and his home in Salem, Oregon.
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