More Than a Vote, a group of prominent Black athletes and entertainers headlined by Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James, has announced that its initiative to increase the number of poll workers in Black electoral districts across the United States has enrolled 10,000 volunteers since its inception.
The group confirmed that the effort — dubbed “We Got Next” — had reached the 10,000 volunteer milestone in a Twitter post from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a New York-based civil rights organization and law firm with whom More Than a Vote is collaborating.
“We marched. We demanded change. Now, we’re ensuring our voices are heard,” the tweet read. “Ten thousand new poll workers.”
Election officials in America have reported a shortage of poll workers, who help ensure elections run smoothly and all votes are counted, to staff in-person voting sites since early voting for the presidential election began.
A plurality of poll workers who sign up for election-day shifts tend to be over 60 years old, according to officials, and would be at high-risk for suffering potentially life-threatening consequences if they contracted the novel coronavirus while volunteering in public, resulting in fewer signing up this year than years prior.
This shortage has disproportionately affected Black communities, which, before COVID-19’s destabilizing effects, already experienced longer wait times to vote and had fewer polling places than many white communities.
According to a release obtained by The New York Times, We Got Next will be highlighted in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, with first-time poll workers being among the virtual fans in attendance.
The release also laid out a plan for Phase 2 of the group’s efforts, which will be aimed at 11 cities that still face poll-worker shortages — including southern, Black voter hubs such as Birmingham, Jackson, Houston, San Antonio and Montgomery — as well as cities that have significant Black populations in battleground states that could reshape the election, like Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Flint, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
In addition to the poll workers recruitment effort, More Than a Vote announced in July it would be helping to pay off the court debts and fees of Florida voters with felony records so they could cast ballots in November’s presidential election.
“There’s a lot of people that want change in the Black community,” James told The Times in June. “If you actually don’t put in the work or if you don’t have the mind-set, there’s never going to be change.”
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