Former First Lady Michelle Obama is planning to use her long-standing popularity to energize communities across America and register more than a million new voters as the nation prepares for this year’s midterm elections.
“In 2020, millions made their voices heard at the polls,” Obama wrote early Saturday on Twitter. “But now, folks who oppose that progress are making it harder to vote. That’s why I’m asking you to join @WhenWeAllVote and 30 other organizations to turn out more voters and urge Congress to pass voting rights legislation.”
She added a copy of a letter from When We All Vote, the campaign to register and organize voters that she founded in 2020. The national, nonpartisan initiative is on a mission to change the culture around voting and to increase participation in each and every election by helping to close race and age gaps, according to its website.
In Obama’s letter — which also ran as an ad in the Sunday New York Times — she wrote, “One year ago, we witnessed an unprecedented assault on our Capitol and our democracy. From Georgia and Florida to Iowa and Texas, states passed laws designed to make it harder for Americans to vote. And in other state legislatures across the nation, lawmakers have attempted to do the same.”
“This type of voter suppression is not new,” her letter read. “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.”
“We’ve got to vote like the future of our democracy depends on it,” Obama maintained. “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.”
According to her letter, When We All Vote and more than two dozen other voter advocacy organizations would recruit and train at least 100,000 volunteers to register and turn out voters in their communities throughout 2022.
She vowed to register more than a million new voters across the country and organize at least 100,000 Americans to contact their senators and encourage them to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Furthermore, the coalition will recruit thousands of lawyers to protect voters in states where the freedom to vote is threatened and educate voters on how to vote safely in their state.
In closing, Obama wrote, “As John Lewis said, ‘Democracy is not a state. It is an act.’ And protecting it requires all of us.” She called on community leaders, organizations, businesses and all Americans to join efforts to protect voting rights in what she calls a “critical moment for our history and the future of our country.”
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