Michelle Obama is stepping into the 2020 election with a program to boost voter turnout
Michelle Obama is stepping into the 2020 election with a program to boost voter turnout
By Jada Yuan at the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/michelle-obama-is-stepping-into-the-2020-election-with-a-program-to-boost-voter-turnout/2020/05/21/e2e115fc-9b6a-11ea-ad09-8da7ec214672_story.html#click=https://t.co/W4ZkDaX1LG
May 21, 2020 at 2:21 p.m. EDT
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As the 2020 presidential campaign heated up this year, and candidates crisscrossed the country in a pre-pandemic world of handshakes and rallies that seems almost unimaginable now, one question loomed: Where were the Obamas in all this?
On Thursday, Michelle Obama took her first concrete step toward being a factor in the 2020 election. Her nonpartisan voting initiative, When We All Vote, which she founded months before the 2018 midterms, announced a coalition of 31 mayors across the country who will be brainstorming and sharing lessons and practices about how to increase voter registration and civic engagement.
“This current crisis is a clear reminder of how critical it is to have competent leadership at all levels of government,” she said in a recent Zoom call with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, announcing the launch of the program, called Civic Cities. “Voting is bigger than any one party, any one issue, any one candidate, any one election,” she added. “The point is that no matter what party, what ideology, we want everyone to participate. We need your voices in this with us.”
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“This pandemic will likely have a significant impact on the November election and on how voters across the country cast their ballots,” said Obama, who did not turn on her video on the Zoom call, but used a photo of herself in a purple suit as her avatar. “Already in state and local elections, we’ve seen voters forced to choose between protecting their health and making their voices heard. And that’s absolutely not acceptable.” The big thing to keep an eye on, she said, was ensuring that the health and economic crisis of the pandemic “doesn’t turn into a crisis of democracy, too.”
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