Obama goes to TikTok to push voter registration

Former President Obama is pulling out all the stops on National Voter Registration Day to expand the Democratic Party’s reach, including appealing to younger voters through a partnership with well-known TikTok creators.

The creators who are part of the initiative — and whose content reaches more than 30 million users across social media — will release videos with Obama that encourage eligible voters to go to IWillVote.com and register, a spokesperson for the former president told The Hill.

“As part of President Obama’s ongoing efforts to mobilize young voters, President Obama has engaged content creators and activists, including at his office in Washington, DC and in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention,” the spokesperson wrote.

“President Obama discussed the stakes of the election, the importance of making sure everyone is registered to vote, and he also had some fun,” they added.

The engagement between the creators and the former president has generated thousands of visits to the website already, expanding the party’s nationwide effort to reach new, younger voters less than 50 days before the 2024 election. 

Obama has already partnered with comedian and impressionist Matt Friend, “I’ve Had It” podcast hosts Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, and music industry executive Carter Gregory, according to his office.

The former president and his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, endorsed Vice President Harris shortly after President Biden decided in July that he would withdraw from the race. The duo also gave compelling speeches during the Democratic convention earlier this summer in Chicago.

Obama made a similar push in August last year, encouraging potential Generation Z voters on the video-sharing app to register to vote and touting the achievements of the current administration. 

Democrats have had a thorny relationship with the short-form video app, operated by Chinese-owned company ByteDance. Biden signed legislation in April that could lead to a U.S. ban on TikTok, despite his now-halted reelection campaign joining the platform in February. Harris’s 2024 campaign also started a TikTok page shortly after she announced her candidacy for the White House. 

Former President Trump, Harris’s political rival, who previously was in favor of banning TikTok, reversed his stance this year and has warned voters this month that they should back him if they want to “save TikTok.” 

“The other side’s closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok,” said the GOP nominee, who now has more than 11 million followers on the app. 

The initiative targeting young voters comes as Harris’s campaign recently launched its own initiative to encourage younger voters, particularly in swing states, to register to vote. The team is looking to engage with potential backers both online and in person, with a variety of events planned on college campuses in the battleground states.

“The stakes this November couldn’t be higher, and Vice President Harris knows our democracy is stronger when we all vote,” Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

“We are focused on meeting young Americans where they are to drive home the stakes of this election on the issues they care most about, and that when we vote, we win,” she added.