Black Athletes, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Join To Combat Voter Suppression

LeBron James is partnering with dozens of other African American athletes and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) to combat the coronavirus pandemic’s potentially negative impact on voting access this November.

The More Than A Vote program aims to recruit poll workers and encourage African American residents to vote in the upcoming election.

“We are not politicians or policy leaders and we are not trying to be. Our organization is not here to tell you who to vote for,” More Than A Vote’s website says in an open letter. “As individuals, we may choose to talk about specific policies or candidates, but as a team we came together to focus on one issue this year: systemic racism’s impact on our right to vote.”

One major concern for the organization as Nov. 3 approaches is the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to the letter.

“Our voting locations must offer safe, socially distanced voting,” the letter said. “If we don’t address this now, no joke, many Black people will be forced to put their health at risk just to cast a ballot.”

The coronavirus places the most active group of poll workers – people older than 61 – at risk, said Anne Houghtaling, deputy director of LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute. That could lead to more polling locations shutting down, she said, which could adversely affect African American populations in cities like Cleveland.

“There can be oftentimes a link between access to transportation and income based on race,” Houghtaling said. “When you have lots of polling site closures, every mile or half mile that somebody needs to travel is that much harder.”

The remaining polling sites then get higher traffic and have longer lines, Houghtaling said, creating additional difficulties in casting a ballot.

“When there are long lines, if you have a job and you can’t wait in line for four hours or six hours or eight hours to vote, if you have children or parents that you have to take care of, if you can’t wait in line that long, you lose your right to vote,” Houghtaling said.

LDF usually focuses its efforts on Southern states, Houghtaling said, but the More Than A Vote campaign includes cities that experienced difficulties voting in the 2020 primaries, as well as areas important to individual athletes.

“They are interested in expanding it beyond LDF’s traditional states and adding jurisdictions where there might be large [numbers of] African American voters, where there could be lines at the polls, or cities where we’ve seen problems,” Houghtaling said. “Baltimore, Atlanta, throughout the primaries we’ve seen long waiting lines in all of these places.”

The More Than A Vote initiative includes efforts to improve voting rates as well as poll worker numbers. A round of advertisements kicks off Sept. 1 in coordination with a nationwide poll worker recruitment day.