‘All In’ to achieve a fair vote
Stacey Abrams is watching what’s going on. Her fight against suppression is on film.
Stacey Abrams seems so nice. Then you realize that glow is a flaming sword.
“I try to convert fear into anger and outrage,” she says. “Fear, you curl into a ball, you go into the fetal position. But anger, you go out and you seek justice.”
One of the main story lines to watch in the final two months before the presidential election is the incidence of voter suppression. The Amazon documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” arriving Sept. 18, addresses such practices as restrictive identification requirements (i.e., whether the signature on one’s ballot
is an “exact match” for one’s signature on a government ID), the purging of voter rolls, the removal of polling places and other policies that have disproportionately affected certain groups.
Who better to amplify these issues than Abrams? The Democrat’s 2018 bid to become the U.S.’ first Black female governor was marked by all of those practices (her Republican opponent, thensecretary of state — now governor — Brian Kemp, was in charge of running the election). She narrowly lost and has since made promoting voter rights her mission. “All In” co-director Lisa Cortés (a current Emmy nominee for HBO documentary “The Apollo”) said the film had to not only tell Abrams’ story but give enough history to highlight the importance of voting rights and show that today’s struggles are not new — “that past is prologue,” said Cortés.
“Our film gives you the context historically but also shows you the contemporary manifestations of the same old tricks from 100 years ago.”
“This is the first monster movie I’ve ever made,” said co-director Liz Garbus, a two-time Oscar nominee and two-time Emmy winner. “The monster is voter suppression, and no matter how many times you think you’ve slain it, it comes up with a new mask. In Georgia in 2018, voter purges, ‘exact match’ — those were new masks, same old monster.”
Abrams videoconferenced with The Times to talk about the state of voting rights in the current election cycle — including President Trump’s recent call to supporters to vote more than once, the controversial actions of the postmaster general, what she sees as serious challenges to the fabric of American democracy and the role of “righteous indignation” in meeting them. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
The president recently said to supporters in North
Carolina that they should vote twice — both in person and by mail — ostensibly to test the system.
He was suborning fraud. He was telling his supporters to commit the very thing that actually doesn’t happen [to a statistically significant degree] because it’s a felony. In North Carolina, it’s even more egregious because North Carolina does not require intent. You don’t have to prove that someone intended to commit fraud. So they walk in and say, “The president told me to vote in person and by mail”; that person could be arrested and go to prison. Even if they use as their defense they didn’t know and they thought the president said it was OK.
This is a man whose ignorance and his mendacity are dangerous to our democracy. He attempted to clean it up, but he’s ignorant as to the process and, I think, ignorant as to the necessity of a democracy — which means you don’t get to have what you want just because you want it.
Unfortunately, in this cycle, he’s being encouraged by a Republican Party that has spent the best part of the last 20 years trying to meet the demographic changes of our country through increasing constraints on who’s allowed to vote. But the problem is, when you break the machinery of democracy, you break it for everyone.
What are the biggest obstacles to this election being conducted fairly?
The solution to a free and fair election is not the conversion of those to whom voter suppression seems like a necessary evil. It is the conversion of those who think voter suppression is impossible to beat. Those are the people I need to reach: those who’ve given up their power because they don’t believe it’s worth fighting anymore, those who are attempting to fight but don’t know the battlefield. My job, our job, is to arm them with information.
If you know that one of the challenges is you may get kicked off the rolls, then double-check your registration. On Sept. 22, make sure you’re registered to vote. If you think your polling place is likely to get shut down because it’s in a poor community, you can sign up to be a poll worker. If they have enough poll workers, they can’t justify closing the polling place.
The average age of poll workers is mid-60s. Because they’re the population most susceptible to COVID-19, they’re refusing to work because they don’t want to die. That’s why [Sept. 1] was National Poll Worker Recruitment Day. We need more poll workers, especially younger ones.
Let’s be clear: We cannot eliminate voter suppression in a cycle. It has existed as long as this country has. But what we can do is mitigate it.
What else would your organization, Fair Fight, have citizens do?
Number one, you will need to make a plan to vote, understanding the full range of your opportunities — voting by mail, voting early in person or voting in person on election day. Make a plan of how you’re going to do it. Then share your plan: Tell others, people who live in swing states. When people are reminded to think about it, they’ll preemptively act.
Number two, as I said earlier: Volunteer to be a poll worker. We need people to make sure those who can’t vote by mail can get into the process anyway.
Then number three: We need people to volunteer to be poll observers. If you go to FairFight.com, you can sign up to be a poll observer or you can be a volunteer. We’re going to be making phone calls and texting, reminding people of how they can vote and answering questions. But also, if there’s a problem, we can deploy volunteers virtually to help.
You previously spoke hopefully that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has made controversial moves that could have deleterious effects on voting, might change course after congressional questioning. Then he said to both houses that he would not, for instance, restore the mailsorting machines he removed. How important is the current brouhaha with the Postal Service, and what is the remedy?
There has been progress made; it’s about process versus a single event. The elimination of sorting machines is a terrible blow, but they were also going to not deliver mail and [make ballots more expensive to mail]. There were a lot of different things they were going to do to undermine the process. We have been able to mitigate — that’s my watchword: ‘Mitigation’ is what we need to go for in this election, because we do not have Republican leadership in the Senate willing to solve the problems.
The solution has been encouraging the expansion of drop boxes, encouraging people to start using their vote-by-mail privileges early. We want people to vote by mail, but don’t wait for it, don’t assume it’s going to happen at the right time. Be proactive and go early.
We cannot fix the brokenness of the current Republican Party’s approach to our democracy. But we can meet them on the battlefield and we can fight back. They’re going to win some battles. They’re going to get some things done they shouldn’t. But we’re going to win some battles too.
One I like to talk about is: In January 2020, there were 34 states where you could vote by mail without an excuse. As of today, through litigation and legislation, there are 41. That’s change. And that change happened because people got involved and we were able to push. Those are things that can be accomplished.
What, realistically, can be achieved before the election to promote access and participation for everyone?
I encourage everyone to go to our website, allinfor voting.com, which is in the film. There are many things we can do. It depends on what state you’re in; it depends on how effective litigation has been. We know in Wisconsin, for instance, there had been an all-out push against vote-by-mail until they realized Republicans needed it too. And now you have Republicans running ads in Wisconsin contradicting Donald Trump.
Democracy isn’t partisan. It doesn’t matter who you vote for; the process should be uniform. If you think about it like basketball, the regulation size of the court doesn’t change from city to city, from team to team. You have to have the same rules wherever you are; that’s what makes it work. Part of our responsibility is to know what those rules are so we can make it work where we are until we get to the place where uniformity becomes what we have.
“All In” co-director Lisa Cortés was just talking about balancing the messaging of fear and hope — that both are necessary.
When people are afraid, they often give up. I like to introduce the challenges, but I try to convert fear into anger and outrage. Righteous indignation requires action. Fear, you curl into a ball, you go into the fetal position. But anger, you go out and you seek justice. When people are out seeking justice, that creates hope. So for me, in the continuum, we begin with fear but we end with action. And if that action creates change, then hope lives. And that’s the mission.