‘Uncommitted’ Pro-Palestine Voting Group Says It Won’t Endorse

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Earlier this year, 100,000 voters in Michigan cast ‘uncommitted’ votes in the Democratic primary, rather than selecting candidate Biden.

A pro-Palestine group that pushed for thousands of “uncommitted” votes against the president in Michigan’s primary election has said it will not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris even as it urges voters to reject former President Donald Trump.

As Harris is set to appear with Oprah Winfrey from Michigan on Thursday, the Uncommitted National Movement—which started in the Great Lakes state—wrote in a statement that the vice president’s “unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.”

The group added that it “opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing.” The Uncommitted National Movement is also urging its supporters against voting for third-party candidates, seeing that as another path to a Trump victory.

The pro-Palestine group is frustrated that Harris did not respond by its self-imposed Sept. 15 deadline to meet with Palestinian American families who have lost loved ones during the Israel–Hamas war or to discuss plans to block arms shipments to Israel. They also pushed for a Palestinian speaker at August’s Democratic National Convention (DNC), which never came to fruition.

“For months, we have urged Vice President Harris to shift her Gaza policy so we could mobilize voters in key states to save lives and our democracy. The DNC and the Vice President’s campaign fumbled even a small gesture to unite our party ahead of November by rejecting the simple request of a Palestinian American speaker,” the group added.

Michigan is a critical battleground in the race for the Electoral College. Previously considered part of the “blue wall” of northern states that have leaned toward Democrats in recent decades, Trump won the state in 2016 by roughly 10,000 votes, but Joe Biden won it back in 2020 with a margin of more than 2 percent.

That Democratic support, however, saw cracks in February when more than 100,000 people cast “uncommitted” votes against Biden in Michigan’s presidential primary to protest his military and humanitarian support for Israel. The state has one of the country’s largest populations of Arab American voters. The “uncommitted” campaign was continued in other states nationwide throughout the 2024 presidential primary cycle.

While Harris has recently been empathetic about the situation for Palestinians in Gaza, she has remained committed to Biden’s foreign policies and has said she supports Israel’s “ability to defend itself” while pushing for a hostage and cease-fire deal.

“We are doing the work of putting the pressure on all parties involved to get the deal done … And I support the need for Palestinians to have dignity, self-determination, and security as we move forward and get a two-state deal done,” she said during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia on Sept. 17.