There’s been a lot of talk about Taylor Swift’s marching orders to her 112 million Instagram followers this past Sunday. Some folks are welcoming her to the resistance. Others wish she’d shut her political cake hole and stick to singing (but Kanye West’s blathering on is totally cool).
No matter which side of the fence you find yourself on in the debate over whether celebrities should be able to use their status to motivate the political leanings of their fanbase, there is no denying that an endorsement or suggestion from the right star gets shit done. According to Buzzfeed, Vote.org has seen an insane spike in traffic since Swift waded into politics.
From Buzzfeed:
“We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift’s post,” said Kamari Guthrie, director of communications for Vote.org.
For context, 190,178 new voters were registered nationwide in the entire month of September, while 56,669 were registered in August.
In Swift’s home state of Tennessee, where she voiced support for two Democratic candidates running in this year’s midterms, voter registrations have also jumped.
“Vote.org saw [Tennessee] registrations spike specifically since Taylor’s post,” Guthrie said. The organization has received 5,183 in the state so far this month — at least 2,144 of which were in the last 36 hours, she said, up from 2,811 new Tennessee voter registrations for the entire month of September and just 951 in August.
Holy shit.
Whether this massive registration will translate into a whack of voters turning up to cast their vote remains to be seen. Hopefully, by the time November rolls around, folks will have it in them to understand that participating in the United States’ particular form of democracy isn’t just a right. It’s also a vital responsibility.
Image: CC BY 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31520967