Opinion | Stacey Abrams: Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression - The New York Times 5/16/19, 11(05 AM

Stacey Abrams: Why I Am

Determined to End Voter
Suppression
As more people of color claim political power, efforts to block
them will accelerate — unless we act.
By Stacey Abrams
Ms. Abrams is the founder of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action.

May 15, 2019

ATLANTA — In the mid-1960s, when my father was a teenager, he was arrested. His
crime? Registering black voters in Mississippi. He and my mother had joined the
civil rights movement well before they were even old enough to vote themselves.

They braved this dangerous work, which all too often created martyrs of marchers.
In doing so, my parents ingrained in their six children a deep and permanent
reverence for the franchise. We were taught that the right to vote undergirds all
other rights, that free and fair elections are necessary for social progress.

That is why I am determined to end voter suppression and empower all people to
participate in our democracy.

True voter access means that every person has the right to register, cast a ballot and
have that ballot counted — without undue hardship. Unfortunately, the forces my
parents battled 50 years ago continue to stifle democracy.

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Opinion | Stacey Abrams: Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression - The New York Times 5/16/19, 11(05 AM

My home state, Georgia, for example, suffered a vicious blend of electoral

malfeasance, misfeasance and mismanagement during my race for governor last
fall. But Georgia is not alone.

Local and state officials across the country, emboldened by the Supreme Court
effectively neutering the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, are
shamelessly weakening voter registration, ballot access and ballot-counting
procedures.

These officials slyly mask their assaults through criteria that appear neutral on the
surface but nevertheless target race, gender, language and economic status. The
“exact match” policy in Georgia, which a federal court deemed unlawful in November
because it requires perfect data entry to secure a timely registration, serves as one
example of such a policy.

Although “exact match” lacks the explicit racial animus of Jim Crow, its execution
nonetheless betrayed its true purpose to disenfranchise voters of color. Georgia’s
secretary of state held 53,000 voter registrations hostage under exact match last
year, 70 percent of which came from black voters, who made up only around 30
percent of Georgia’s eligible voters.

The state officials behind exact match were well aware, per an earlier lawsuit, that
when only a missing hyphen or a typo in a government database can form the basis
to withhold the right to vote, people of color will bear the brunt of such trivial
mistakes.

A particularly egregious example involved a voter whose last name is “del Rio.” He
was affected by the policy merely because the department of motor vehicles office
where he registered to vote did not allow spaces in last names. He was “delRio”

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Opinion | Stacey Abrams: Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression - The New York Times 5/16/19, 11(05 AM

there. But the voter rolls do allow spaces. No exact match. Voters like Mr. del Rio
faced unnecessary hurdles, and poll workers were not trained properly to make sure
that voices like his were heard.

Across the country, voter purges employ an easily manipulated “use it or lose it”
rule, under which eligible voters who exercised their First Amendment right to
abstain from voting in prior elections can be booted off the rolls.

Add to this mix closed or relocated polling places outside the reach of public transit,
sometimes as far as 75 miles away, or long lines that force low-income voters to
forfeit half a day’s pay, and a modern poll tax is revealed.

State legislatures have continued the trend this year. In Texas, officials are
attempting to further criminalize eligible voters for inadvertent errors often caused
by language barriers. In Tennessee, a state with notoriously low voter turnout, the
legislature approved a bill subjecting third-party groups conducting voter
registration drives to onerous requirements under threat of civil and criminal
penalty.

In Florida, 1.4 million Floridians with felonies were re-enfranchised with a

constitutional amendment last year that passed with 65 percent of the vote — the
largest expansion of voting rights in a half-century. But the legislature has
contravened the will of the people, once again disenfranchising hundreds of
thousands of returning citizens through a bill that imposes an antiquated poll tax on
them in the form of court fees.

After voters run gantlets to get on the rolls, they are undermined by the
mismanagement of inexact voter databases, ancient and under-resourced machines,
lost absentee ballots or by elections officials who refuse to count votes that were
properly cast.

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Opinion | Stacey Abrams: Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression - The New York Times 5/16/19, 11(05 AM

On election night 2018, as phones rang with tales of missing machines, provisional
ballots allocated by a vague lottery system and regular voters vanishing from the
rolls, I made a simple demand: Count every vote.

Over the next 10 days, my campaign logged over 40,000 calls of voter suppression,
sent out volunteers to help voters make sure their provisional ballots were counted
and quickly filed numerous lawsuits. Amid this chaos, the results of the election were
certified. We demonstrated the immensity of the problem, yet opponents to voting
rights responded with the specious claim that increased turnout was somehow proof
that no suppression had occurred.

That argument is shameful. A record number of black, Latino and Asian-

American/Pacific Islander voters turned out in Georgia to support an inclusive
agenda, which led to even more of those voters being subjected to voter suppression.

Voters of color endured three-, four- and five-hour lines on Election Day precisely
because so many who turned out to vote were confronted with under-resourced
precincts and faulty voting machines. Unprecedented turnout led to countless
thousands being blocked or turned away.

The state’s top elections official, former Secretary of State Brian Kemp himself —
functioning simultaneously as the scorekeeper, referee and contestant in the
gubernatorial election — was caught revealing to supporters that he was
“concerned” about record absentee ballot requests from voters of color.

In response, I redoubled my commitment to voting rights and started a nonprofit

called Fair Fight Action to harness the commitment and urgency of Georgians who
reported, by a 52 percent margin, that they believe suppression affected 2018
election outcomes.

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Opinion | Stacey Abrams: Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression - The New York Times 5/16/19, 11(05 AM

This distrust, shared by millions of others nationwide, should alarm every American;
democracy should not differ so dramatically across state and, worse, county lines,
where hyperlocal suppressive tactics like the proposed closing of most polling places
in a majority-black South Georgia county last year can slip under the radar.

That’s why we filed a federal voting rights case three weeks after Election Day,
demanding that Georgia’s elections system comply with constitutional obligations
and requirements under federal law, including those provisions of the Voting Rights
Act that remain in force, and we asked that Georgia be required to pre-clear voting
changes again with the Justice Department before taking effect.

We ask for proper and uniform training of poll workers, timely processing of
absentee ballots, functioning and secure voting machines, accurate voter registration
databases, an end to policies like “exact match” and “use it or lose it,” and many
more necessary remedies.

Facing an existential crisis of democracy, Americans cannot resign ourselves to

disenfranchisement and dismay. We must find hope in the energy of voters who
supported access to health care, economic opportunity and high-quality public
education in record numbers.

This is our ethos: Use the ballot box to create the change our communities need and
deserve. In Georgia and across our country, voters deserve the right to pick their
leaders and set the direction of our nation. And we shall not rest until this democracy
is fully realized.

Opinion | Cliff Albright

Tennessee’s Vengeful Lawmakers April 24, 2019

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Opinion | Stacey Abrams: Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression - The New York Times 5/16/19, 11(05 AM

Opinion | LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright

How to Turn a Person Into a Voter Oct. 27, 2018

Why Stacey Abrams Is Still Saying She Won April 28, 2019

Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) is the founder of Fair Fight Action and was the Democratic nominee for
governor in Georgia in 2018.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2019, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: We’re in the Fight of Our
Lives

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