Abrams champions for voters’ rights
This week, U.S. president-elect Joe Biden solidified his election win by flipping Georgia, bringing his total to 306 electoral votes, compared to Trump’s 232.
Meanwhile, the outgoing president continues to repeatedly peddle unsubstantiated claims of fraudulent votes, and has refused to concede the election.
In truth, the most recent threat to American democracy precedes Trump. It began in 2008 as a “voter integrity movement” took shape, buoyed by the racist belief that Barack Obama was an illegitimate president.
A turning point came in 2013 when the Supreme Court of the United States gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Shelby County v. Holder. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg likened the decision to throwing out one’s umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.
This was followed by a downpour of state-by-state legal barriers aimed at blocking and delaying access to voting rights, with disproportionate negative impacts on Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and young voters. These tactics included the introduction of strict voter ID laws, consolidation of voting locations and senseless mass purges from voter rolls.
Rather than earning the wider trust of the electorate, Republican strategists opted to launch partisan attacks aimed at limiting access to voting for those unlikely to support their agenda, compounded by voter intimidation amplified by Trump himself.
What the Republicans underestimated in their strategy was the resilience of the people in this voter suppression fight.
Some of the same people who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., found themselves marching again more than 50 years later to see voting rights defended. They were joined by a new generation of leaders, including rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams.
Through her Fair Fight initiative, which registered more than 800,000 voters and educated millions more about early voting and the integrity of mail-in ballots, Abrams played an instrumental role in the voter registration work that laid the groundwork for
Biden’s electoral win in Georgia.
Her 2018 run for Georgia governor was lost by a thin margin. The results were riddled with voter suppression tactics deployed by her opponent, sparking her subsequent uncompromising focus on rectifying the system that failed Black voters especially.
Georgia is the state where my own ancestors found their way to freedom and purchased their first parcel of land. It’s where my great-grandmother Savannah Lockhart lived out 112 years of her life farming the red dirt soil. And it’s where my great-grandfather James Lockhart, a farmer, teacher and graduate of Fort Valley State University, ran for local elected office in 1976. He was unsuccessful in his bid, but spent his life encouraging his family and community to exercise their democratic right to vote.
My family has seen every version of Georgia — from slavery, to Jim Crow, to voter intimidation so intense that exercising your right to vote could very well cost you your life.
Was this the great America Republicans were working to return to?
Voters shouldn’t be forced to put in the time, money and mental bandwidth required to jump through the hoops required to acquire photo identification in order to exercise their right to participate fully in their democracy.
Watching the U.S. election, I came away with a greater appreciation for automatic voter registration here in Canada, the independent and nonpartisan Elections Canada approach to proactively updating voter information, and the flexible accommodations provided to voters who lack governmentissued photo ID with their address.
Biden has a responsibility to ensure that as his cabinet and agenda are formed, those who delivered his win — and Black women in particular — are brought along on the work ahead toward inclusive COVID-19 response and recovery.
While she has now turned her attention to the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff election this January in Georgia, Abrams has made her mark through her efforts inspiring and galvanizing a disenfranchised electorate. Her contributions increased the political power of a people and, in turn, those people changed the course of American history.