Michelle Obama has launched a new coalition to register a million new voters across the nation in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections, Politico reports.
In an official letter, titled “Fight For Our Vote,” Obama stated that the coalition will organize at least 100,000 Americans to contact their senators to urge them to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Election reform has been at a standstill in Congress since the bills were first introduced.
Obama referenced the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as the impetus for the importance of voting in the upcoming election cycle.
“One year ago, we witnessed an unprecedented assault on our Capitol and our democracy,” she wrote. “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.”
Obama compared voter suppression tactics that have sprung up in several to “poll taxes, literacy tests, and laws designed to strip away [Americans’] power,” saying that “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.”
The letter also includes a plan for recruiting and training at least 100,000 volunteers through 2022 to register for a massive turnout of voters; registering more than a million new voters throughout the country; and recruiting thousands of civil rights attorneys “to protect voters in the states where the freedom to vote is threatened.”
