Michelle Obama Commits to Registering 1 Million New Voters Ahead of Fall Elections

Voting rights remain one of the biggest issues in politics today, with a number of conservative lawmakers continuing efforts to restrict voting rights — especially for people of color. And now, former First Lady Michelle Obama has stepped into the battle with a newly announced effort to register one million new voters ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.

The Hill’s Olafimihan Oshin reported that as part of the newly announced effort, “Obama said her foundation, When We All Vote, along with 30 other organizations will recruit and train at least 100,000 volunteers to register voters.” 

Groups included in the new effort to promote voter registration include The League of Women Voters, the National Bar Association, the NAACP, Rock the Vote, Common Cause and the Voto Latino Foundation.

According to Oshin, “The groups also aim to activate 100,000 people to contact senators about passing voting rights legislation, and recruit ‘thousands’ of lawyers to protect voting rights ‘in the states where the freedom to vote is threatened.’”

In her announcement, Obama pointed to voting restriction bills currently passed in Georgia, Texas and Florida as examples of why the new initiative is so important and why protecting voting rights is so imperative.

“This type of voter suppression is not new,” Obama said. “Generations of Americans have persevered through poll taxes, literacy tests and laws designed to strip away their power — and they’ve done it by organizing, by protesting and, most importantly, by overcoming the barriers in front of them in order to vote. And now, we’ve got to do the same.”

She also added, “We’ve got to vote like the future of our democracy depends on it. And we must give Congress no choice but to act decisively to protect the right to vote and make the ballot box more accessible for everyone.”

 

Related: For more recent diversity and inclusion news, click here.

 

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