Hundreds of Companies Unite to Oppose Voting Limits, But Others Decline

Hundreds of corporations and executives, including Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Warren Buffett, and others, signed on to a new statement condemning “any oppressive legislation” that would make it harder for people to vote.

It was the business community’s biggest display of unity so far as businesses around the country continue to navigate the partisan controversy over Republican attempts to enforce new election laws in nearly every state. Republicans such as Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell have urged businesses to stay out of politics.

Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of Merck, put together the argument in the last few days. A copy of the book was advertised in The New York Times and The Washington Post this morning.

Mr. Chenault and Mr. Frazier led a group of Black executives last month in calling for businesses to become more involved in fighting similar legislation around the country after only a few major companies voiced resistance to a restrictive new voting law in Georgia.

Businesses have expressed support for voting rights since then. However, the new declaration, which included GM, Netflix, and Starbucks as signatories, represented the broadest coalition yet to weigh in on the subject.

Mr. Chenault said, “It should be clear that there is overwhelming support in corporate America for the principle of voting rights.”

The statement makes no mention of particular election laws in states like Texas, Arizona, or Michigan, and Mr. Chenault said businesses do not plan to oppose individual bills.

“We are not being prescriptive,” he said. “There is no one answer.”

Mr. Frazier stressed that the comment was meant to be bipartisan, stating that upholding voting rights should be supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

“These are not political issues,” he said. “These are the issues that we were taught in civics.”

However, in this hyperpartisan age, the topic has devolved into a full-fledged political brawl, with big business caught in the crossfire. Top Republicans have accused the business world of siding with the Democratic Party in the last month after corporations began speaking out against Georgia’s law and laws in other states.

Georgia lawmakers have threatened to revoke a tax exemption that saves Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines millions of dollars per year. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida released a video in which he called Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, another Atlanta firm, “woke corporate hypocrites” for opposing Georgia’s rule. Mr. Trump has backed calls for a boycott of businesses that oppose voting rules. Mr. McConnell also said last week that businesses should “stay out of politics.”

The debate’s politically charged nature can explain why the new statement’s signatories have some notable omissions.

According to people familiar with the situation, Coca-Cola and Delta, which both condemned the Georgia law after it was passed, refused to add their names to the list. Despite co-founder Arthur Blank’s support for voting rights, Home Depot also refused in a conference call with other business executives on Saturday. Ken Langone, another co-founder of Home Depot, is an outspoken Trump supporter.

“The most fitting approach for us to take is to continue to underscore our belief that all elections should be open, honest, and secure,” Home Depot said in a statement on Tuesday.

According to those involved in the process, some of the Atlanta companies that did not sign were wary of the backlash they had received after their previous comments on voting rights. They also did not feel compelled to speak out again.

Many businesses do not want to be forced to take positions on particular legislation, state by state, as the controversy over voting legislation heats up.

JPMorgan Chase also refused to sign the statement despite a personal appeal from senior Black business leaders to the CEO, Jamie Dimon. Dimon has publicly stated his support for Black Lives Matter and made a speech on voting rights in front of a large number of other companies, stating, “We believe voting must be accessible and equitable.”

“We publicly made our own strong statement last month about the critical importance of every citizen being able to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” a bank spokesman said.

Mr. Chenault and Mr. Frazier met with three other Black executives, William M. Lewis Jr., chairman of Lazard’s investment banking division; Clarence Otis Jr., a former CEO of Darden Restaurants; and Charles Phillips, a former CEO of Infor, about 10 days ago to discuss next steps. They had a draft of the statement in a matter of days and discussed it with other executives.

Mr. Frazier and Mr. Chenault met with members of the Business Roundtable, a powerful advocacy organization that comprises the CEOs of several of the country’s largest corporations, on Wednesday. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.’s president and director-counsel, Sherrilyn A. Ifill, also spoke to the community.

Then, on Thursday, at the group’s request, someone from Mr. McConnell’s team briefed its representatives on the specifics of the Georgia law.

The Business Roundtable’s executives addressed the voting problem at their regularly scheduled meeting the next day. Dan Schulman, PayPal’s CEO, urged other executives to sign the statement during the conference call.

Mr. Chenault and Mr. Frazier both spoke at a Zoom conference with over 100 executives on Saturday, which was arranged by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale professor who frequently convenes business leaders to discuss politics. Mr. Chenault read the declaration at that meeting and asked the executives on the call to sign it.

Many businesses jumped at the opportunity. On the other hand, Chief executives were able to sign the declaration directly while keeping their company’s name off the list in certain situations. Mr. Buffett, the chairman, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, was one of them. He has long argued that companies should stay out of politics, but he also said at the company’s annual meeting in 2018 that when he took the position, he did not place his political views “in a blind trust at all when I took the job.”

Some businesses, including some who signed the declaration, requested that a sentence committing them to “oppose any discriminatory legislation or policies that limit or prohibit any qualified voter from having an equal and reasonable chance to cast a ballot” be removed. The thread, according to Mr. Chenault and Mr. Frazier, was critical, and it was held.

“Throughout our history, corporations have spoken up on different issues,” Mr. Chenault said. “It’s absolutely the responsibility of companies to speak up, particularly on something as fundamental as the right to vote.”

As Republicans push election reform in almost every state, the controversy over voting legislation has become an all-consuming problem for the business community.

As the Michigan Senate prepares to hold hearings on a package of voting bills, the CEOs of 30 of the state’s largest corporations, including Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Quicken Loans, issued a joint statement on Tuesday expressing their opposition to improvements to the state’s election laws that would make voting more difficult.

“We are calling on Michigan lawmakers and state legislatures across the nation to ensure that any changes to voting laws result in protecting and enhancing the most precious element of democracy,” G.M. said in a separate statement on Twitter.

“Anything less falls short of our inclusion and social justice goals,” it concluded.

More major businesses reiterated their opposition to restrictive new voting legislation in Texas, where two omnibus bills that would impose voting limits are making their way through the Legislature.

“We categorically oppose any legislation that unfairly seeks to restrict the right of our team members or any American to vote in fair, accessible, and secure elections.” Hewlett Packard Enterprise, based in Houston, said in a statement.

Activists and labor organizations in Arizona have begun calling on corporations with significant operations in the state, such as CVS, Allstate, Farmers Insurance, and Enterprise Holdings, to publicly condemn legislation that would restrict voting rights.

The backlash from Georgia becoming the first state to pass a restrictive new voting law has continued this week. Because of the regulation, a film starring Will Smith and funded by Apple had to pull its production out of the state on Monday. This came after Major League Baseball announced that the All-Star Game would be moved from Atlanta to Denver.

Doug McMillon, Walmart’s CEO and chairman of the Business Roundtable, who refused to sign the document, told Walmart employees in a lengthy note this week that many of the voting bills around the country were “both a mix of positive reforms that enjoy bipartisan support, along with other changes seemingly designed to create an advantage for one party.”