As election nears, league continues calls to vote
LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA. » Udonis Haslem is honest about it: Elections simply have not been overly important to him.
That is, until now.
He’s been a registered voter since 2004, so it’s not like he’s been unaware of the process or how it works. But it’s also been far from a passion project for Haslem, the Miami Heat forward who serves as a team captain and tries to set an example for every other player in the locker room. So, this year, that meant getting involved in the election process.
“Growing up in my household, voting was never a conversation,” Haslem said. “Voting was never a conversation when I went to school. It definitely wasn’t a conversation when I was hanging out with my homeboys. There was just never a conversation. So, for me to be able to be a leader in this league and to be able to be a leader on my team, I had to educate myself.”
This is why Haslem and Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, players on different sides of this year’s NBA Finals, are teammates once again — just as they were in Miami from 2010 through 2014. Haslem is one of more than 50 Black athletes and entertainers who are lending their celebrity and influence to the “More Than A Vote” campaign, a group headlined by James and formed not long after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were part of what reignited the quest to eliminate racial inequality and police brutality in this country.
The group’s primary mission right now: defeat what it calls “systemic, tar
geted voter suppression” and protect Black voters.
“I know we’re here playing the game, but I’m not losing the fact of what’s important as well,” James said earlier in these playoffs. “More than a vote, it’s about protecting Black voters and voter suppression that goes on in our communities. ... We always talk about change in our communities, and now we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to really create change for the better.”
The numbers, so far, are to James’ liking: The National Basketball Players Association says almost all eligible voters within its membership are now registered, something that had been a major undertaking inside the NBA’s restart bubble at Walt Disney World — where the app players downloaded to learn their way around the bubble even included directions on how to register.
More than half of the NBA’s arenas, all of which would be otherwise sitting empty on election day, have either been registration-drive sites or will serve as polling locations — a player demand when the season was nearly called off in August because of more racial unrest. And the More Than A Vote group has already recruited 20,000 poll workers for election day around the country.
“These athletes, just like everybody else, had a mix of paralysis — because we’ve all been unable to do anything — and rage and anger and frustration,” More Than A Vote’s Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Michael Tyler said. “And I think they were actively looking for a way to kind of channel all of those emotions into action. How do you fight back, right? I think that’s what’s been different about this moment. It’s not sim--
ply about raising awareness. It’s, ‘How do I actively leverage my own influence and platform to changing the mechanics of how elections operate?’”
James and others lending celebrity weight to the cause knew they couldn’t do this alone. They brought in experts: Tyler was a deputy communications director during Sen. Cory Booker’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, and executive director Addisu Demissie managed the national campaign for Booker as well as California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state campaign in 2018. The group is officially nonpartisan, though it’s no secret that James and many others involved in the group are backing Democratic nominee Joe Biden over President Donald Trump.
James knows his political views are popular with some, not popular with others.