(Reuters) – More than 100 US companies, including Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Ford Motor Co and Starbucks Corp. have expressed opposition to the ballot boards a number of states are considering implementing.
Activist groups say the restrictions – set out in voting rights bills already passed in Georgia that are weighted in Texas and Arizona, among others – specifically target black people and other racial minorities.
“We should all feel a responsibility to defend the right to vote and to oppose any discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair chance to vote,” the companies said in a letter. published as a two -page advertising page nyti.ms/3e0fvnL in the New York Times on Wednesday.
The statement was the initiative of former American Express CEO Ken Chenault and Merck & Co. CEO Ken Frazier.
“It was important for companies to affirm some of the basic principles of our democracy and the most fundamental is the right to vote,” Chenault said in a Reuters interview.
The two directors on Saturday pressured companies to take a stand on a Zoom call with about 100 CEOs, investors, lawyers and corporate executives.
Republican lawmakers have criticized executives for ruling on the issue. Chenault said the group that sponsored the letter, which includes the Black Economic Alliance, would not be “prescriptive” about how companies should express opposition to certain pieces of legislation.
Republicans across the country are using former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of election fraud to support statewide voting changes they say are needed to restore election integrity.
Opponents of the movement say they are meant to give citizens who tend not to vote Republican rights to freedom.
In a separate statement Tuesday, senior executives at more than three dozen Michigan companies, including General Motors Co. and Ford, proactively opposed Republican-backed legislation that could restrict voting there.
Coca-Cola Co. and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. were not among the signatories of Wednesday’s letter, but issued individual statements calling Georgia’s voting boards “unacceptable.”
Delta declined to comment on Wednesday’s letter. Coca-Cola said it did not see the letter, but was open to hearing from the Black Economic Alliance.
“We are continuing the dialogue,” Chenault said.
Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M. and John Stonestreet