Marsha Johnson-Blanco

Marcia Johnson-Blanco is the Co-director of the Lawyers’ Committee’s Voting Rights Project. She manages the Project’s programmatic and advocacy portfolios which include leading Election Protection, the nation’s largest non-partisan voter protection program, overseeing the work of the National Commission on Voting Rights, promoting election reform, ensuring minority participation in the redistricting process and ensuring that those with felony convictions regain their right to vote. Marcia started at the Lawyers’ Committee as a staff attorney in 2004 working on the first Election Protection program during a presidential election. In 2005, she served as the deputy director of the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act which was organized to review the record of discrimination in voting from 1982 – 2005. The findings of the Commission were a significant part of the record considered by Congress in the 2006 reauthorization of the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Marcia also served as a member of the litigation team defending the 2007 challenge to constitutionality of the Act.

Marcia is a recognized leader in voting rights who has participated in countless voting rights discussions at conferences and in the media. She also coordinates the Lawyer’s Committee’s international human rights initiatives. She has worked on shadow reports discussing U.S. compliance with two important treaties: the International Convention on the Elimination on all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and has presented before the reviewing bodies during treaty reviews in Geneva Switzerland. Additionally, she serves as the co-chair of the CERD taskforce of the U.S. Human Rights Network.

Marcia is very proud that her essay on voting rights is part of an exhibit at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia.

Marcia has taught as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. She received her J.D. from Villanova University School of Law and a Bachelor of Science degree in Linguistics from Georgetown University.