(Reuters) – More than 100 U.S. companies, including Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Ford Motor Co. and Starbucks Corp., have stated their opposition to votes being considered by a number of states.
Activist groups say the restrictions – set out in the suffrage bills already passed in Georgia and weighed in Texas and Arizona, among others – are specifically targeted at black people and other racial minorities.
“We must all feel a responsibility to defend the right to vote and to oppose discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent voters from having an equal and equitable opportunity to vote,” the companies said in a statement. a letter said -page-advertisement nyti.ms/3e0fvnL in Wednesday’s New York Times.
The statement was the initiative of former American Express CEO Ken Chenault and Ken Frazier, CEO of Merck & Co.
“It was important for companies to assert some of the core principles of our democracy, and the most important thing is the right to vote,” Chenault said in an interview with Reuters.
The two executives on Saturday urged businesses to take a stand on a Zoom call with about 100 CEOs, investors, lawyers and corporate directors.
Republican lawmakers have criticized CEOs for speaking out on the issue. Chenault said the group sponsoring the letter, which includes the Black Economic Alliance, was not going to be “prescriptive” about how companies should voice their opposition to specific legislation.
Republicans across the country are using former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud to repair the change at the state level that they believe is necessary to restore the integrity of the election.
Opponents of the move say they are meant to deny citizens who do not want to vote Republican.
In a separate statement Tuesday, the top executives of more than three dozen companies in Michigan, including General Motors Co. and Ford, proactively opposed Republican-backed legislation that could restrict voting there.
Coca-Cola Co. and Delta Air Lines Inc in Atlanta were not among the signatories of Wednesday’s letter, but made individual statements calling the polls in Georgia ‘unacceptable’.
Delta declined to comment on Wednesday’s letter. Coca-Cola said he did not see the letter, but that he could hear the perspective of the Black Economic Alliance.
“We are continuing the dialogue,” Chenault said.
Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Edited by Ramakrishnan M. and John Stonestreet