With Support From Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, Tinashe and More, HeadCount Registers Nearly 150,000 Voters as Midterms Heat Up
variety.comJem Aswad Senior Music Editor Of all the issues currently threatening U.S. democracy, attacks on the voting system may be the most severe.
Yet as the 2020 election showed, despite those threats, the system can still work — and the best thing people can do is, in order, vote, and get involved.
Leading the charge for the music industry for the past 18 years is HeadCount, the not-for-profit, non-partisan organization that you’ve probably seen at any number of concerts, registering voters at a table in the venue’s lobby or merch areas at festivals including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and many more.
With support from Harry Styles, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Panic! At The Disco, David Byrne, Anderson .Paak, Tinashe (pictured above), Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews Band, Dead & Company, Paramore and many more, the organization has registered more than 145,000 voters already this year — the most it has seen to date for a midterm election (the previous peak was 89,000), and has led hundreds of thousands of others to check their registration status. (Head here for information on the organization and volunteering.) “We’re joined at the hip with the music industry,” says executive director Andrew Bernstein, pointing to board members including Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, Brooklyn Bowl’s Peter Shapiro, Superfly’s Richard Goodstone, Red Light Management’s Patrick Jordan, AEG’s Don Strasburg and others, as well as new director of artist relations Lisa DeLuca, formerly of Epic Records.
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