- published: 21 Mar 2008
- views: 245240
Project Vote (and Voting for America, Inc.) is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that works to mobilize marginalized and under-represented voters. Its current executive director is Michael Slater, who has worked for Project Vote since 2004. Project Vote's efforts to engage low income and minority voters in the civic process include the provision of training, management, evaluation and technical services.
A national organization known as Project VOTE!, originally a project of Americans for Civic Participation, was active between 1982 and 1993, and after reorganizing formed the foundation of today's organization. Project VOTE! is best remembered for a highly successful Chicago voter registration drive run by Barack Obama in 1992.
Project Vote in its present form was incorporated in 1994 as Voting for America, Inc., and in 1997 began registering as Project Vote/Voting for America. In 2010, the organization dropped Voting for America from its registered name.
Barack Hussein Obama II (US i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician serving as the 44th President of the United States, the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, and ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for the United States House of Representatives in 2000 against incumbent Bobby Rush.
In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the March Democratic Party primary, his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his inauguration, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.