With low voter registration rates and the midterm elections knocking on our doors, former First Lady Michelle Obama embarked on a non-partisan campaign to fire up voters across the country. And this past Friday, she visited the University of Miami and was welcomed by a standing ovation as she urged young voters to get ready to vote.
“You wouldn’t give your crazy uncle the power to post a picture to your Instagram feed, so why would you give a stranger the power to make far more important decisions in your life?,” said Obama to the young crowd, urging them to vote.
Obama said that she wasn’t there “to tell anyone who to vote for.” Instead, she stressed the need to break what she said has become “a dangerous cycle when it comes to voting,” in which people who sit out from voting become frustrated with politics that don’t reflect our values.
“When a huge chunk of the populations sits out of the process why are we surprised when our politics don’t reflect our values?,” she said.
“We gotta make voting trendy. We gotta hashtag it,” she said. “If you don’t take that power, if you don’t understand what that power means, then we’ll be back in that cycle. And we don’t want that for any of our young people.”
At the event, she was joined by singers Kelly Rowland, Erica Campbell, and star Keegan-Michael Key. All of which repeatedly stressed the importance of voting and making change.
“When we don’t vote, no one is going to hear us,” said Kelly Rowland, “if we don’t say anything, nothing will happen.”
Nearly 5,000 people attended the event which was organized by When We All Vote, a new, not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization that is launching a voter registration initiative across the country.
“It’s very important to vote especially in a time of division in the United States,” said Isaiah Walker, a student at the University of Miami who attended the rally, “It is extremely important to get people of color out voting, we are the most underrepresented people in the voting polls and as me being an Afro-Latino, it’s extremely important for us to be the ones who vote.”
The rally was mostly comprised of students, and among the attendees were students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, students who have been part of a national movement to push voters for gun reforms after a shooting at their school claimed the lives of 17 students and faculty in 2017.
A Stoneman Douglas senior, Drew Schwartz, who is soon going to vote for the first time this November, attended the rally and told CBS news that gun laws are among the most important issues for him.
“One of the most important issues is representation and for people to make sure their officials are representing their beliefs and not supporting their own interests,” he said.
According to experts, it’s too soon to know the impact and turnout of new voters in the upcoming midterms, but data released by the Florida Division of Elections shows that young voters are turning out to the polls in greater numbers than before. And with more than four million Americans turning 18 this year, Obama hopes that initiatives such as the the rally on Friday will create a dialog that will motivate the new generation of voters.
“For all the young people on the room, this is your future, it’s time to move out of your way and let you lead,” said Obama as she closed her speech, “but if you don’t understand that power, we will be back at the cycle.”
“Who knows what the world might look like, when we all vote.”
