Former first lady Michelle Obama pledged in a letter Sunday to register over 1 million voters in the run-up to the the 2022 midterm elections, reports Politico.
Obama, founder of When We All Vote, an organization dedicated to registering voters, said in her letter that she, along with a coalition of voting organizations, would try “organize at least 100,000 Americans to contact their Senators, calling on them to do everything they can to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”
Politico notes that the letter, which ran as an ad in The New York Times’ Sunday edition, “comes at the start of a week when President Joe Biden will travel to Georgia to speak on what the administration views as Republican efforts to suppress the vote.”
During his time in Georgia, Biden is expected to discuss support for a filibuster measure that would allow a voting rights bill to pass the Senate.
In the letter, Obama cites that “this type of [current] voter suppression,” is comparable to “poll taxes, literacy tests, and laws” of old “designed to strip away [Americans’] power,” but it is not mentioned in the letter what is being referred to as voter suppression. She adds 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 first mention of voter suppression is referenced in the letter’s opening lines, “one year ago, we witnessed an unprecedented assault on our Capitol and our democracy,” Obama writes.
“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.”
