“Protecting voter rights and making voting more accessible is both pro-business, and more importantly, pro-American,” LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman told CNN Business in an email.
The billionaire is urging other business leaders to end their financial support of “any politician” who supports the hundreds of controversial voting bills being proposed and passed in 47 states.
“This should be a simple, single-issue reason to stop supporting any politician,” Hoffman said.
He told the outlet he hopes that businesses will back up their public denouncing of the legislation by cutting off economic support for politicians who are sponsoring the legislation.
Additionally, Hoffman wants more corporations to get their employees voting, and hold events to encourage voting.
After Georgia passed its voting restriction law last month, several businesses have publicly come out against the law that makes voting by mail harder, and imposes restrictions on absentee voting. Other states have proposed similar measures, citing the unfounded claims made by Donald Trump during his failed re-election campaign that widespread voter fraud led to his defeat.
In recent weeks, Major League Baseball pulled its All-Star Game out of Atlanta in protest of the legislation, and companies headquartered in the Peach State, like Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola have made public statements against the law.
Black business executives have also organized their corporate colleagues to come out against similar legislation and to discuss strategies in protest of the bill.
The legislation comes after record voter turnout across the country during the 2020 election, which flipped Georgia blue and sent two Democratic senators to Washington, D.C. to represent the state.
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