On the 50th anniversary of when 18 to 20-year-olds were given the right to vote via the 26th Amendment, non-profit voter registration organization HeadCount launched Save The Vote!, an interactive campaign to encourage young Americans and cultural leaders to speak out for voting rights.
Save The Vote! is the first national campaign HeadCount has run specifically on voter rights. It is founded on their core values statement: “Elections should be fair, accessible, and trustworthy.”
Dozens of musicians and cultural leaders will participate, with many directly calling their own elected officials and capturing those moments on social media videos. Lil Dicky, Big Freedia, Dead and Company, Ministry, Michael Franti, Kam Franklin of The Suffers, Shah, and Amy Lee of Evanescence are among the many HeadCount supporters who are using their platforms to Save the Vote!
View the campaign landing page at HeadCount.org/SaveTheVote
“50 years ago, our country gave electoral power to the youth vote at a time when we knew their voices could no longer be silenced,” said Andy Bernstein, HeadCount’s executive director, “and today, we are bringing young Americans and their favorite musicians into the national conversation about voting rights.”
The campaign hits on the same day that a divided Supreme Court ruled to uphold restrictive voting laws in Arizona. That came just days after the For The People Act — a Federal bill to protect voting rights — was stalled by a filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, 389 restrictive bills in 48 states have been introduced by state lawmakers to limit voting rights. Save the Vote! keys in on those state-by-state battles.
At HeadCount.org/SaveTheVote, users will find a listing of what’s happening in all 50 states. To access that information, they first play a little guessing game, predicting where their state ranks in how easy it is to vote. Then — after selecting their state on an interactive map — they’ll learn about pending or recently passed voting legislation in their home state. Visitors can also learn about how voting rights impact specific nonpartisan issues such as Criminal Justice, Racism and Discrimination, Jobs and the Economy, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Save the Vote! marks an extension of HeadCount’s work beyond voter registration and Get Out the Vote activities. Save the Vote! will also be integrated into HeadCount’s hallmark field program, as volunteers speak with concert and festival-goers at events like Peach Fest, Newport Folk Festival, Bonnaroo, Bass Canyon, Louder than Life, Ohana Festival, Lost Lands Festival, and tours by Dead & Company and Dave Matthews Band.
