JACKIE HUBA AND DRAG OUT THE VOTE
Photo Courtesy of David Heisler
Photo Courtesy of Drag Out the Vote
By Denny Patterson
T
he 2020 presidential election is coming up, so you best be registered and ready to sashay your way to the polls! Drag Out the Vote, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, is on a mission to educate, register, and turn out voters by working with drag artists across the country to promote participation in democracy. With a strong history of activism, drag carries a long and storied history of impact on social justice movements across the United States. Conceived in 2017, but formally established in 2019, Drag Out the Vote was born out of Jackie Huba’s determination to get the LGBTQ+ and allied communities engaged about voting. In realizing that one in five LGBTQ+ people are not registered to vote, and over 100 million people did not vote in 2016, Huba set out to find a solution. OutClique had the opportunity to chat more with Huba about Drag Out the Vote, how important of an organization it has become, and what more we can do to make people vote. Denny Patterson: Hi, Jackie! Thank you for taking some time to chat with me about Drag Out the Vote. Can you begin by telling us more about the organization and how it got started? Jackie Huba: I was never someone who was
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involved with politics. I think I only voted in the presidential election, and that was it. After the 2016 election, I started to learn more about what was going on in our country related to voting. I realized that 100 million people didn’t vote in 2016, which is a massive amount. Then learning that one in five LGBTQ+ people are not registered to vote, I was amazed. So, I got involved with some local stuff in Austin, Texas in terms of an activist group, then the inspiration for bringing drag artists into this, in 2019, I decided that I wanted to do something bigger in my activism. Like, something on a national scale. Voter registration and getting out the vote were the top things I thought I could work on, but what different twist could I bring to it? It was really Jaremi (Phi Phi O’Hara) who was the inspiration behind that because in 2017. I worked with him on his big charity benefit for Puerto Rico hurricane relief. The Queens United fundraiser we raised $80,000, and Jaremi brought like 24 Drag Race queens together for a cause, and honestly, that had never really been done before at that scale. So, when I thought about voter registration and getting out the vote, what twist has never been done before, drag artists. Mobilizing drag artists all over the country. Not just Drag Race, but all drag artists helping to get out the vote.
