In 146 days, Americans will head to the polls to decide the next president and cast their votes for countless other national and local races and initiatives. Now, several music nonprofits are looking to make the industry’s presence felt on Nov. 5 via the launch of a new voter engagement coalition, Music Votes.
Composed of nonprofits from across the industry, the platform aims to increase voter participation by ensuring that those in the industry, along with music fans, are registered to vote, have the correct form of identification required to vote and show up to vote in person or by mail. Developed and led by the Music Sustainability Alliance — the group behind the first-ever Music Sustainability Summit held earlier this year — Music Votes is designed to be an easy and high-impact program that can be deployed at scale by artists, music companies, venues and record stores. Involvement with Music Votes can range from a simple task, like posting voter registration links on social channels or websites, to more involved projects like having artists and their teams help fans and employees check their ID status or working with election night concerts produced by the nonprofit #iVoted.
Music Votes will also provide resources for non-partisan information on issues like climate change, disability culture, LGBTQ rights, and racial and reproductive justice. The initiative will also provide data on where any given artist has the biggest civic impact in a bid to help artists and the.
