3/15/21
Stacey Abrams' stark warning about Georgia's new election bill being racist is shining a spotlight on a nationwide battle over whose voices will be heard at the ballot box, as Republicans around the country try to suppress voting rights. The Georgia Democrat's comments on CNN Sunday come amid a building showdown over GOP efforts to make voting harder in multiple states following former President Donald Trump's loss and his lies about ballot fraud, and Washington Democrats' vast federal election and civil rights bill that would counter such efforts. Flurries of bills have been introduced in the key battleground states that decided the 2020 election and were the focus of Trump's attempts to undermine it, but Republicans are also ramping up in Texas and other strongholds that Democrats have lately tried to challenge. Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia and a voting rights activist who helped President Joe Biden become the first Democrat in nearly three decades to carry the state, has been in the trenches, getting people out to exercise a right that is again under threat. The clashes over who can vote, where and when could define the future of America's political system and therefore represents one of the most important issues currently before the country.
Abrams was asked about Georgia state bills that would end automatic voter registration and limit voting by mail and Sunday voting, all steps that experts say disproportionately target Black voters who tend to vote for Democrats. "I do absolutely agree that it's racist. It is a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie," Abrams told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union," referring to historic state and local laws that institutionalized racism and segregation in the 19th and 20th centuries. Georgia is not alone in seeing a fight to define election laws for political advantage. In Texas, a new Republican bill seeks to limit who can vote by mail. These efforts are taking place against the volatile backdrop of once-in-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts, which is always a fraught process and will be especially divisive this time around after Trump's single term left the country and its state and local politicians even more polarized. National and local Republicans justify their push to restrict access to the ballot by arguing that after the last presidential vote, millions of Americans have lost confidence in the process. But those doubts are largely fueled by a campaign of lies by Trump and the conservative media about the last election, which were abetted by many GOP office holders who helped stir the hysteria that incited the deadly US Capitol insurrection.
