After the first round of speeches were broadcast on night one of this year’s all-online Democratic National Convention (DNC), former President Barack Obama took to Twitter to call on Americans to get ready to vote in order to put the remarks that they’d heard into practice. Obama posted his remarks as a direct reply to a post from former First Lady Michelle Obama’s account. Discussing her own Monday night DNC speech, Michelle had said that if folks “want to end the chaos and division—and keep alive the possibility of progress on the issues we hold dear” then Americans have “got to vote for @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris like our lives depend on it.” Barack agreed.
As the former president put it:
‘As Michelle said, we’ve got to do everything we can to elect @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris . So make sure you have a plan to vote. Vote early. And tell everybody you know to register to vote at http://iwillvote.com.’
As Michelle said, we’ve got to do everything we can to elect @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris. So make sure you have a plan to vote. Vote early. And tell everybody you know to register to vote at https://t.co/XdZz4dh82T. https://t.co/rAUsWHusbV
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 18, 2020
Voting early — and voting by mail, which Democratic leaders have also often encouraged — helps ensure that last-minute, Election Day issues won’t keep Americans from having the chance to make their voices heard. The former First Lady has been leading an organization called When We All Vote that has been seeking to increase Americans’ engagement with the voting process, while on the flip side of that, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have long fought against opening up access to the ballot box. Most recently, that fight has taken on the form of Trump’s recent threatening suggestion that he could hold up emergency funding for the Post Office in order to thwart voting by mail. (He eventually said that he may approve the funding if Democrats concede to certain other Republican demands.)
Meanwhile, Barack himself is also slated to be a part of the DNC. He is scheduled to have his speech broadcast on Wednesday night, which is the same night that remarks will be broadcast from high-profile figures like Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Democratic vice presidential pick Kamala Harris herself.
Check out Twitter’s response to Barack below:
