Yara Shahidi and Jimmy Fallon have teamed up ahead of midterm elections in November to encourage voting.
The Grown-ish star and host of The Tonight Show appear in a three-minute song giving viewers some motivation for voting in the 2018 midterm elections. The segment features a dancing and singing voter's ballot, as well as animated versions of Yara and Fallon in the style of Schoolhouse Rock!, the classic cartoon that gave the world civically focused musical numbers like “I’m Just a Bill.”
In the segment, Yara explains to Fallon that she’s headed to “Voting Avenue,” “A place you get to go when you turn 18.” The trio of Yara, Fallon, and the singing ballot explain to viewers how to register to vote through Vote.gov or Siri on an Apple device. It also highlights the importance of the local elections that occur between presidential elections.
Yara recently revealed that her well-known interest in politics derived in part from frustration at not being able to vote in the 2016 presidential election.
"My passion really stemmed from having gone through the 2016 election, where myself and many of my peers were unable to vote," she said earlier this month. "A lot of them went with their parents to the polls, but there was that feeling of being lost. Like, 'What can we do to contribute to our sociopolitical landscape?'"
She launched the Eighteenx18 initiative to encourage voting this midterm election. Voter turnout is often a focus of midterm elections, as the races that come between presidential election years historically see lower turnout numbers, according to Pew Research Center data. But according to The Hill, primary turnout surged from the 2014 midterms; 22.7 million Democrats and 19.3 million Republicans showed up for primary votes.
Women, including LGBTQ women and women of color, ran for political office in unprecedented amounts in the 2018 midterm primaries. And they saw great success — according to NBC News, the majority of women who ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as Democrats won their primaries. Now, there's a chance that a record-breaking number of women will be elected to Congress on November 6, according to The Washington Post.
"Voting Avenue" will air on Monday night's episode of The Tonight Show, which features guests Reese Witherspoon and Lenny Kravitz and kicks off at 11:35 P.M eastern on NBC.
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