Texas Leaders Julie Oliver and Mike Siegel tapped to lead voting rights organization Register2Vote
Two progressive organizers and political leaders tapped to lead Register2Vote’s nationwide voter registration efforts
Austin, TX — On Monday, March 29, 2021, civic engagement and voting rights organization Register2Vote announced the appointment of Julie Oliver and Mike Siegel to take on new leadership roles at the organization. The Board of Directors named Julie Oliver to serve as Executive Director and Mike Siegel to serve as Political Director.
Texas ranks 45th in the nation in the percentage of it’s eligible citizens that are registered to vote. Both Oliver and Siegel are seasoned organizers and former Congressional candidates who made voting rights and the fight against voter suppression central themes of their grassroots campaigns. Oliver’s campaign was lauded for her extensive voter registration operation, including outreach to voters in Killeen-Fort Hood and in rural working-class and minority communities throughout Texas. Siegel made news for suing to stop the closure of early voting locations and successfully defended the right of students to vote at Waller County’s Prairie View A&M University.
“Whether we’re Black, white, Asian or Latino, the right to vote in America is the mechanism through which we express our shared values about how we can improve our democracy,” said Julie Oliver. “But ever since Shelby v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act, the United States has entered a period of extreme racialized voter suppression with a wealthy few rigging the system to further consolidate their wealth and power. As a lifelong Texan, I know how corrosive voter suppression and disenfranchisement is to a functioning democracy. I’m thankful for the opportunity to help lead the fight against these anti-democratic efforts at Register2Vote, an organization on the frontlines of expanding the franchise. It’s time for us to unite and fulfill the promise of our democracy as envisioned in the Constitution.”
Register2Vote was founded in 2018 by Army veteran Jeremy Smith, who led the organization’s efforts to send 2.3 million voter registration forms to eligible voters across the United States in the 2020 election. In partnership with Vote Save America, Register2Vote raised $1.8 million from 33,000 individual donors and mailed registration forms to more than 1.2 million unregistered eligible voters across Georgia. Oliver and Siegel will lead the organization’s nationwide voter registration programs going forward.
“The project of achieving a truly representative democracy will take many hands,” said Mike Siegel, “and we are thrilled to be doing this work through Register2Vote, an organization that has pioneered innovative responses to Jim Crow voter suppression. Our mission will be two-fold: first, to protect and expand our existing programs that have registered hundreds of thousands of voters across Texas and the rest of the country, and second, to launch exciting new initiatives that engage voters from the moment of registration all the way through election day. There are no off-years in politics anymore, and we can’t wait to get to work right now.”
“We at Register2Vote are incredibly proud of our work over the past three years building solutions that help all voters, and that support the heroic efforts of under-resourced election administrators and those that make our democracy function,” said the nonprofit’s founder Jeremy Smith. “We are deeply fortunate to have outstanding leaders like Julie and Mike taking the reins to drive that mission forward and grow our impact across the country.”
