Scoop: Obama hits TikTok to register young voters

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Axios

7 hours ago


Former President Obama is taking to TikTok today in search of eligible voters who aren't yet registered to pull the lever for Vice President Harris.

Why it matters: Democrats want to press their advantage with young Americans.

To run up the score on former President Trump with Americans under 30, they need them to be on the voter rolls in real life.

Enter TikTok, the insanely popular video app, even though the White House still has deep concerns about the data collected by its owners, Beijing-based Bytedance.

Driving the news: Obama's TikTok push is part of a broader Democratic effort to use National Voter Registration Day to reach some 30 million potential voters through non-traditional means.

The former president conducted a series of interviews to chat with influencers, like Carlos Espina, a 25-year-old nonprofit director with 10.3 million followers on the platform.

The goal is to convince potential voters to head to IWillVote.com, register and make a plan for election day.

Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz campaign is launching a new battleground effort to register young voters — online and on campus.

The big picture: Both Democrats and Republicans have had a complicated relationship with TikTok, the content it creates and the passions it generates.

Democrats have both privately and publicly expressed alarm about the tenor of the debate on social media, especially around the Israel-Hamas war.

Last November, Obama called out the "TikTok" activism.

But in February, Biden's re-election campaign officially launched its TikTok account with a Super Bowl-themed video.

Then in April Biden signed a bill that could lead to a potential ban of the app.

After Biden dropped out of the race, Harris officially joined the app, declaring "thought I would get on here myself" and quickly embraced the site's meme culture.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/obama-harris-tiktok-election