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Corporate America’s campaign to defend voting rights has moved to Texas, with dozens of companies, including Microsoft, HP and Salesforce, calling on local officials to oppose changes that would restrict access for eligible voters. to the vote.
He open letter Tuesday’s Fair Elections Texas coalition, which described itself as a nonpartisan group, marks the latest in a series of big-company reproaches over Republican-proposed votes following Donald Trump’s election loss.
According to the Brennan Independent Justice Center, nearly 50 restrictive bills have been introduced in Texas, more than in any other state.
The most complete would restrict postal voting, limit early voting time, increase the likelihood of long queues on election day, encourage debugging of voter lists, and increase the risk of voter intimidation, the Brennan Center warned.
The Fair Elections Texas charter, whose signatories included American Airlines, Levi Strauss, and Unilever, presented accessibility to voting as popular among voters on both parties, good for business and critical for commitments. of companies with racial equity.
The organizers of the letter cited the findings of a Republican poll that was there bipartisan support for policies that increase access to the polls, and to study suggesting that Texas ’economy could lose billions of dollars if voting restrictions become law.
“We believe that the growth of free enterprise is directly related to the freedom of its citizens. Freedom is preserved in our democracy when we hold free and fair elections that protect the fundamental rights of all Texans, ”the coalition wrote.
Texas has recently seen an influx of corporate investment. CBRE, Charles Schwab and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have moved their headquarters to the Lone Star state, which has no state or corporate income taxes at the state level. Tesla is building its Gigafactory there and Apple is developing a $ 1 billion campus in Austin.
American Airlines and Dell, two Texas-based companies, had already expressed opposition to specific Republican election laws that Democrats and civil rights groups claim disproportionately deter Texas voters from racial and ethnic minorities.
State Republicans have backed down. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said last month that the Texans were “fed up with corporations that do not share our values in trying to dictate public policies.”
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last week, Sen. Ted Cruz warned “He woke up CEOs:” When the time comes for you to need help with a tax cut or a regulatory change, I hope Democrats welcome you, because maybe we won’t. “
Last month, after companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines condemned new voting legislation in Georgia, Mitch McConnell, A minority leader in the Senate, accused companies of “behaving like an awake parallel government”, telling them to “stay out of politics”.
Instead, executives have been looking to band together in coalitions to coordinate their response to the estimated 361 restrictive voting laws that have been introduced in 47 states, as well as federal legislation proposed by Democrats to expand access to voting.
Several chief executives have also addressed the issue at annual meetings in recent weeks. Larry Culp, CEO of GE, said so shareholders on Tuesday “it is not going to weigh in on all the election laws that were being considered in all 50 states,” but GE believed the election should be accessible, fair, safe and transparent.
Asked by a shareholder last week why his bank had succumbed to “far-left lies” about Georgia’s new voting laws, Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon said he had not commented on state law, but had signed a letter supporting the “basic and fundamental right to vote.”
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