Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse urged Americans living in Canada to vote in the U.S. on Election Day.
Nurse called the Nov. 3 election between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden “the most important of our lifetime,” joining the rest of his team in a public campaign to urge Americans living in Canada to vote, USA Today reported.
“There’s no more excuses this time around,” Nurse told USA Today Sports Tuesday. “I gave you all mine. Everybody’s got excuses, but we’ve all got to put excuses aside and make sure we all do our part and vote. That’s it.”
Nurse said his players were voicing the importance of the 2020 election in March prior to the NBA season being halted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The NBA Players Association reported nearly 96 percent of the league is now registered to vote, up after almost less than a quarter of eligible players voted in the 2016 election.
The Raptors represent one of 20 teams with 100 percent of eligible players registered to vote.
“People are asking for change in a lot of different areas,” Nurse said. “One of the real ways to affect change is through voting and getting through government officials and legislation. If you’re asking for a law to be changed, you need to vote the people you think will change those laws into office.”
The Raptors have encouraged voting on its social media this year and Nurse has amplified the message himself, hoping to convince as many Americans living in Canada as possible to participate in the U.S. election.
The coach added that the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s website had received three times the traffic it receives typically from Canada. The webpage aids with the voting process for service members as well as Americans overseas.
According to the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s overseas voting analysis in the 2016 election, Canada had more than 622,000 eligible voters, though only 7 percent requested absentee ballots in the last presidential election.
Nurse said “there’s some room for improvement” for absentee voter turnout in Canada, as only 5.3 percent of registered voters cast ballots in 2016.