Former President Obama is pulling out all of the stops on National Voter Registration Day to develop the Democratic Celebration’s attain, together with interesting to younger voters by means of a partnership with well-known TikTok creators.
The creators who’re a part of the initiative — and whose content material reaches greater than 30 million customers throughout social media — will launch movies with Obama that encourage eligible voters to go to IWillVote.com and register, a spokesperson for the previous president informed The Hill.
“As a part of President Obama’s ongoing efforts to mobilize younger voters, President Obama has engaged content material creators and activists, together with at his workplace in Washington, DC and in Chicago for the Democratic Nationwide Conference,” the spokesperson wrote.
“President Obama mentioned the stakes of the election, the significance of constructing positive everyone seems to be registered to vote, and he additionally had some enjoyable,” they added.
The engagement between the creators and the previous president has generated hundreds of visits to the web site already, increasing the get together’s nationwide effort to achieve new, youthful voters lower than 50 days earlier than the 2024 election.
Obama has already partnered with comic and impressionist Matt Buddy, “I’ve Had It” podcast hosts Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, and music business govt Carter Gregory, in response to his workplace.
The previous president and his spouse, former first woman Michelle Obama, endorsed Vice President Harris shortly after President Biden determined in July that he would withdraw from the race. The duo additionally gave compelling speeches in the course of the Democratic conference earlier this summer season in Chicago.
Obama made an identical push in August final yr, encouraging potential Technology Z voters on the video-sharing app to register to vote and touting the achievements of the present administration.
Democrats have had a thorny relationship with the short-form video app, operated by Chinese language-owned firm ByteDance. Biden signed legislation in April that might result in a U.S. ban on TikTok, regardless of his now-halted reelection marketing campaign joining the platform in February. Harris’s 2024 marketing campaign additionally started a TikTok page shortly after she introduced her candidacy for the White Home.
Former President Trump, Harris’s political rival, who beforehand was in favor of banning TikTok, reversed his stance this yr and has warned voters this month that they should back him in the event that they need to “save TikTok.”
“The opposite facet’s closing it up, however I’m now a giant star on TikTok,” mentioned the GOP nominee, who now has greater than 11 million followers on the app.
The initiative focusing on younger voters comes as Harris’s marketing campaign not too long ago launched its own initiative to encourage youthful voters, significantly in swing states, to register to vote. The staff is seeking to interact with potential backers each on-line and in particular person, with a wide range of occasions deliberate on school campuses within the battleground states.
“The stakes this November couldn’t be larger, and Vice President Harris is aware of our democracy is stronger after we all vote,” Harris-Walz marketing campaign supervisor Julie Chavez Rodriguez mentioned in a press release.
“We’re targeted on assembly younger Individuals the place they’re to drive dwelling the stakes of this election on the problems they care most about, and that after we vote, we win,” she added.
