People all over the country are having trouble exercising their right to vote, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights said Tuesday morning.

“We are seeing a manifestation of a new Jim Crow in America…I don’t think that’s an overstatement,” said Wade Henderson, who runs the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (a different group from the Lawyer’s Committee). “You are seeing lines longer than those in Baghdad or Kabul.”

To combat poll problems, the Lawyer’s Committee has teamed with half a dozen other civil rights and voting rights groups to operate an election protection hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Dozens of volunteers with legal backgrounds are taking calls from voters encountering obstacles to casting a ballot. The Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights says it fielded thousands of calls Tuesday morning from voters who were turned away from the polls because they lacked photo ID, voters facing polling places with inadequate staff and equipment, and voters whose polling stations opening late.

Click here to read the full story.