With fewer than 70 days remaining until the midterm elections, one of the biggest voter registration organizations is expanding its efforts to make sure people are prepared to cast a ballot this fall.
And if you attend a sporting event or concert, there’s a decent chance you will interact with someone from the nonprofit, nonpartisan group HeadCount.
Last month, HeadCount announced a new partnership with Monumental Sports, which owns the Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics as well as the the Capital One Arena, to provide voter registration services at NBA, NHL and WNBA games in Washington, D.C., as well as concerts and other events at the venue.
HeadCount already works with some of the biggest music stars and corporate brands, and Director of Partnerships and Events Whitt Bell hinted there are more sports-oriented partnerships in the works.
“We’re basically taking our model that we use for concerts, festivals and community events and templatizing it, and putting it in literally a new arena,” Bell said.
Founded in 2004, HeadCount has helped more than 1 million people register to vote by partnering with performers like Beyoncé, Harry Styles, Dead and Co., supporting music festivals including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and brands such as Ben & Jerry’s and Spotify and running online campaigns.
In advance of National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 20, HeadCount has been working to expand its partnerships, with Monumental Sports serving as the next big professional athletics deal, following an event accompanying last winter’s NHL all-star game in Las Vegas.
“Monumental wanted to start us as big as they could, which was not with one team but with three,” Bell said.
The partnership began in July, with HeadCount setting up voter registration tables at the Mystics’ final games of the WNBA season, played at Capital One and the Entertainment & Sports Arena in D.C. With the Mystics now eliminated from postseason play, the sports segment of the partnership will resume this fall when the NHL’s Capitals and NBA’s Wizards begin preseason games and then continue through their entire 2022-23 seasons.
“We see a lot of value in the season partnerships,” Bell said, explaining that regularly participating in events has a far bigger impact than a single occurrence. “Like with artists – we don’t ask to do a single concert, we want to do the whole tour.”
HeadCount will also run tables during every Capital One Arena concert leading up to Election Day (Nov. 8). Scheduled artists include Kid Cudi, Mary J. Blog, Lizzo, Post Malone, The Killers and Smashing Pumpkins and Iron Maiden.
“We have guaranteed staffing at every event, with local volunteers supporting that,” Bell said, explaining that standard staffing includes four to six people but those numbers can be scaled up.
When staffers engage with event attendees, their first question is always whether they are registered to vote. If not, the staffers will help people fill out the paperwork. For those who have registered, staffers will move to a secondary set of actions that include checking registration status, encouraging people to register as volunteers or signing up for absentee ballots.
At least one Grammy-winning global star is helping with voter registration efforts despite not even performing in the United States in the run-up to Election Day.
In July, HeadCount and Billie Eilish announced a contest in which those who register to vote or check their registration status could win a trip to see Eilish perform in Australia and New Zealand in September. In addition to being stops on her world tour, those two nations have much higher voter participation rates than the United States.
“I’m working with HeadCount to encourage everyone to show up at the polls and use their voice during these midterm elections,” Eilish said. With what is going on in our country, we need to get out to the polls and vote for what we believe in. Not showing up is not an option.”
HeadCount isn’t the only organization leading voter engagement efforts. More Than a Vote, the group founded by NBA star LeBron James, has worked with sports teams and arenas to turn those facilities into voting centers. It has also provided funding for election workers in majority-Black districts.
Other artists and celebrities, such as Lady Gaga, used social media to encourage their fans to vote in 2020.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump is traveling to Long Island to tour law enforcement facilities in Nassau County and rally support for local Republican candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections
Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself
Is it possible that our President has simply not traveled enough?
Born and raised in Queens and attending Fordham University in the Bronx, Donald Trump has no record of traveling outside New York until he was over 20, when he transferred to a college in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. Were his formative years amiss, then, in his learning about other places and other people?
Is his view akin to the famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg, an illustration of the United States with New York City as the epicenter of the country and the Hudson River the border of the known world? We can now at least add Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago to the map of “the realm.”
Our President has now traveled some, but what we recommend is another kind of travel. Not a state-sponsored trip or a venture to scout locations for future Trump Towers. This would be a genuine travel experience, enriching and eye-opening, showcasing other cultures and ways of living.
It will extend far beyond viewing military parades, hobnobbing with such “understanding” world leaders as Kim Jong Un, or taking tea with the King.
WHERE, then, should the President go? As Elon Musk’s Starship spacecraft is not yet ready to take passengers to Mars, perhaps he could explore our own vast country?
Maybe he could travel to “flyover country,” the farming states, where his ying-yanging tariffs and trade restrictions have played havoc with rural economies. Or possibly to California, number one in homeless U. S. citizens, and while there, regale homeless veterans (approximately 32,500 nationwide) with tales of his brave exploits invading and bombing foreign countries.
Or he might tour the Great Lakes, and rename the other four?
WHEN should he go? This will be tough, as he is very busy building his ballroom and renaming bodies of water.
How about a trip in early November, around the midterm elections? Despite the long-discredited accusation of widespread voter fraud, it would be reassuring to know he might be so caught up divvying out ladles of soup in a soup kitchen somewhere that he wouldn’t remember to deploy the military for “election security.”
HOW will he travel? He should definitely not take his Qatari-donated, newly renovated 747, especially after last time, when he had to be smuggled off clandestinely in a catering truck. It’s unlikely any traveling companions, like the Secretary of State or of the Treasury, are going to fall for the ruse a second time. Besides, we may need those people. No more decoys!
Perhaps the President could fly commercially, although this likely would expose him to undue suffering. Without gold bathroom fixtures and maple wood floors, the trip will be no “Luxury Experience.” If only he still had his “Trump Shuttle,” bought with a massive loan he later defaulted on, saying then, “I’m smart. I got out at a good time.”
Considering the potential pitfalls, maybe it’s best the President travel incognito, disguised perhaps as an elderly woman wearing a lot of bronzer.
Wherever, whenever, however: our President needs a vacation.
Moreover, we need a vacation from him.
If the President refuses our travel suggestions, here’s another idea:
Let’s get him a pet! He has never owned a pet. As we know with our children, pets teach essential life lessons: compassion and empathy; they instill a sense of responsibility. There is a well-established connection between those who can care for a pet and those who can care for people.
So, which pet should we choose? A puppy? A kitten? A boa constrictor?
Imagine, the President may even decide he likes having a pet. After all, what is more obedient than a well-trained dog, besides possibly the Cabinet? And what is more docile than a sweet kitten, other than plausibly the Supreme Court?
The President may even become more mellow with a pet afoot and less likely to slap tariffs on our allies, or attempt to annex our neighbors, or bully our Congress. (Realizing, of course, a bully requires active participation from the bullied to maintain his status.)
Maybe we should do both: get the President a pet and devise a travel plan for him. (Do you think we could possibly convince him to leave his phone at home?)
Let’s go for it! After all:
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. (David Mitchell)
And for our President, that would likely be the most profound discovery of all.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."