Hundreds of business and celebrity representatives on Wednesday signed a statement opposing any law restricting access to the ballot box in the United States, as several texts tabled by Republicans on how to run the elections are examined.
Multinationals like Amazon, Facebook and Goldman Sachs, wealthy businessmen like Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett, big law firms, NGOs, but also actor George Clooney and singer Paula Abdul, have put their names on it.
“For American democracy to work for all of us, we must guarantee the right to vote for all”, it is written in this statement published in the form of advertisement in the New York Times and the Washington post.
“We should all feel responsible for defending the right to vote and to oppose any legislation or discriminatory measure which restricts or prevents any eligible voter from having an equal and fair chance to vote,” he added in this insider’s text by former American Express boss Kenneth Chenault and current Merck boss Kenneth Frazier, both African-American.
They have sought to mobilize the business world since the adoption in the State of Georgia of a law supposed to fight against electoral fraud, for example by strengthening checks on the identity of voters voting by mail.
But according to its detractors, it limits access to the polls and particularly targets African-American voters.
However, in Georgia, a state in the southern United States still bearing the wounds of segregation, it was thanks to a record mobilization, in particular of black voters, that Joe Biden won in November 2020.
Several texts similar to the one adopted in Georgia are now being prepared in the country, in Arizona, Texas, Florida and Michigan in particular.
Led by Donald Trump, who has never explicitly conceded his defeat, many Republicans indeed consider, without proof, that the last elections were marred by fraud.
In this context, several civil rights organizations and personalities are pressuring companies to intervene more forcefully in the political debate.