MR. CAPEHART: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Welcome to our Race in America series and to our guest, a leading voice against voter suppression, as chair of Fair Fight, Stacey Abrams.
Stacey Abrams, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MS. ABRAMS: Thank you for having me.
MR. CAPEHART: So before we get into talking about the voting rights efforts that you're leading, I want you to comment on the protests that have been taking place around the country after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and also after the Atlanta police killing of Rayshard Brooks, whose funeral I think you attended.
MS. ABRAMS: I think we are in the moment of both reflection and inflection. We have to call the names of just the most recent, so George Floyd in Minneapolis; Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky; Ahmaud Arbery, who was murdered in Brunswick, Georgia; as well as Rayshard Brooks, who was murdered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ahmaud stands separate because he wasn't killed by police, but the justice system which is the larger narrative that we have to tackle, the justice system let his murder go unaccounted for and unpunished for 74 days, because the people who killed him, one of them was associated with the sheriff's office. And writ large, our challenge in America is that justice does not get meted out equally. In fact, it doesn't even humanize many blacks who are killed, particularly by those who are sworn to protect them.
And so I think this racial moment we are having begins with this conversation of extrajudicial killings, but it cannot be divorced from the disproportionate number of deaths by black Americans based on COVID-19, the disproportionate effect of infection rates, and the economic collapse that is hurting black and brown communities at higher rates than anyone else, and the lack of attention being paid to the disproportionate number of people of color who also face voter suppression. The systemic racism that we see in our society is wrapped into everything from our environment to criminal justice to the application of justice, and the moment we try to say that these things are separate, we set ourselves up once again for the kind of protest and demonstrations we see now. But the extent to which we acknowledge that these are interwoven, through systemic racism, systemic inequities, and systemic injustice, then we can begin to start to address them.
MR. CAPEHART: So then, Stacey, if you were governor of Georgia, sitting in the governor's office today, what would you do, vis-à-vis what happened to Rayshard Brooks, one, and also in terms of the COVID-19 response in Georgia?
MS. ABRAMS: So, I do want to clarify something you said at the top of the story.
MR. CAPEHART: Yeah.
MS. ABRAMS: I'm not contesting the results of the 2018 election.
MR. CAPEHART: Okay.
MS. ABRAMS: I ceded the legal sufficiency. I am contesting the underlying system that allowed those results to become the law--
MR. CAPEHART: Got it.
MS. ABRAMS: --and that is, I think, an important distinction, in part because of what I would do if I were governor. If I were governor, I would be focusing on the systemic inequities that plague the state of Georgia, beginning with our failure to expand Medicaid. One of the reasons Georgia is facing such a disproportionate effect on black Americans, on black Georgians, is the fact that we have the least likelihood of being able to access health care. If Georgia were to expand Medicaid for our poorest populations, 36 percent of those who would receive access would be African American and 22 percent would be Latino.
And so, as governor I would have expanded Medicaid, because it would shore up not only health care for every person, it would also shore up our rural hospitals that are crippling under the effects of COVID-19 and decades of neglect.
Number two, I would recognize that while it is a good thing that Georgia, for the first time, or for the second time, has passed a hate crimes bill, which was done last week through S.B.--sorry, H.B. 426, I would veto S.B. 383, I mean 838, which is a bill that seeks to give protected class status to law enforcement, a direct insult to the murder of Rayshard Brooks, in part because what it says is that misconduct can be a basis of suit, but worse, what it says is that in order to give you a hate crimes law to protect you against immutable characteristics that can be used against you, the decision to go into law enforcement gives you heightened protections beyond what the law already permits in the state of Georgia.
But number three, what I would do is address the citizen's arrest law in the state of Georgia, which permitted two men, in broad daylight, to murder Ahmaud Arbery, because they thought they may have seen him commit a crime. And as long as the state of Georgia allows stand-your-ground laws, citizen arrest laws, these back-the-badge laws that do not move forward the conversation of addressing police brutality and the reformation of our public safety, as long as we do not take the steps necessary to protect our people--in fact, our governor, just this week, said he has no plans. He has no plan, and as governor I would have plans for protection, for safety, for treatment, and most importantly, for reopening our economy safely, without putting more Georgians at risk.
MR. CAPEHART: Well, one thing I know you have plans for and that is combating voter suppression, and let's talk about that. The New York Times review of your book calls it, quote, "A striking manifesto, a stirring indictment, and a straightforward roadmap to victory."
You've been working on this since 2018, even before then. How far on that roadmap are you?
MS. ABRAMS: I began working on voter protection issues as a college student, because I'm the daughter of two civil rights activists. My father was arrested at the age of 14, helping register blacks to vote in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
But for most of my work, from the age of 18 until 2013, my work was focused on voter expansion, voter engagement. But with the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, we had to turn our attention to voter suppression, because Georgia, like much of the South, took the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act as the starting gun to expand attempts to suppress votes, particularly targeting communities of color, young people, and the poor.
And where we are on the road is that, unfortunately, we've started regressing. We've moved further away from that good trouble that John Lewis inveighed against, and made certain that we were using to make progress, and now we're trying to get back to where we were, back before you could close precincts with impunity.
We know in the state of Georgia, in 2018, the closure of precincts accounted for between 54,000 and 85,000 people not being permitted to vote. But we also watched in horror this year as Wisconsin joined the ranks of the former Confederate states, using the imprimatur of voter suppression to block access to the right to vote. We saw what happened in Kentucky. We saw what happened in Texas.
And so, unfortunately, we are moving away from the expansion of our democracy that our Constitution should provide, but we have a pathway and we're watching that happen at the exact same time, and that is the expanded use of vote by mail, which gives more and more Americans an easy, safe, and accessible way to cast their ballots.
MR. CAPEHART: I want to talk to you more about vote by mail in a moment, but I want to bring up a question that comes from a viewer in Georgia named David Yamashita. And he asks about what's going on in Kentucky. "How can the state government close polling places, such as what happened in Kentucky? How is this even justified?"
MS. ABRAMS: And that's an important question because when we think about what the Voting Rights Act was designed to do, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act, post the march across the bridge, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, what the Voting Rights Act said is that while the Constitution guaranteed the right to vote, it also delegates to the states the responsibility for administering those votes. And when the state that is the bad actor also becomes the arbiter of the elections and the administration of elections, then what we saw happen for decades, in fact, for centuries, in the state of Georgia and across the country, was the restriction of who could access that right to vote. Initially through Jim Crow laws, and now what we see happening is that states who use the gutting of Section 5, which required them to preclear their decisions, such as closing polling places, that used to be that Kentucky, that Georgia had to get permission. They had to demonstrate in that process that closing a polling place would not disadvantage voters.
I know the process well because when I served as deputy city attorney for Atlanta, I helped our municipal clerk file those applications with the Department of Justice. But in 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion, essentially said that racism is over and that voter suppression no longer exists. And the minute he did so, in fact, within 24 hours, Texas undertook attempts to shut down access to the right to vote.
Since that decision, more than 1,600--I think it's 1,688 polling places shut down just between 2013 and 2018. And what happened in Kentucky happened because there is no one who can force them to keep those polling places open, except for the very state that is making the decision. And when you have one-party rule unfortunately it's even worse, and in the state of Kentucky, while Governor Andy Beshear tried his best to provide access, the way the state operates gave more power to the secretary of state and to that state legislature, and that means that in states that do not want to see people access the right to vote, they have no conditions under which they are forced to keep polling places open. It's not justified but it is allowed.
MR. CAPEHART: So let me ask you about something that we talked about the last time I saw you, which was at the Kennedy Library in December, where you were talking about it's not just the laws that are passed and that are on the books that make it difficult for people to vote, it's impact that those laws have on people and their desire to vote. Can you talk about what those laws do in terms of throwing up obstacles to people, in their minds, about their ability to vote?
MS. ABRAMS: Part of what I describe in the first half of "Our Time is Now" is the labyrinth of rules that people have to navigate. If you live a comfortable life in America where voting has always been simple, congratulations. But for thousands, for millions of Americans it is always a battle. It's a battle to know the law. And we have to recognize that we don't have a single democracy in America. We have 50 different iterations of this notion of democracy. And that means that if you move from state to state, you have to learn the laws of a new state, learn the rules and responsibilities. And that should not happen in the United States of America.
And when those laws are difficult, when it takes a law degree to understand what the rules are, it has not only the effect of blocking your ability to access your right to vote, it convinces you that it's too hard. And this is not because people just look at it and say, "Well, I don't want to do the work." It's that they try time after time after time and they get worn down by the process.
There is a black woman in Wisconsin who, when she faced voter suppression laws in 2016, she was told that she had to get a new ID. She tried her best to get it but she couldn't, because the new law required that she have an original birth certificate. Well, the issue was this woman was 100 years old. She was born in Missouri during segregation, and by law she was not permitted to be born in a hospital. She was not permitted to hold an original birth certificate. And the state of Wisconsin, 100 years later, stripped her of her of a right to vote that she had enjoyed since 1965. And that stripping her of that right meant that she could not cast a ballot.
Well, it didn't just affect her. It affected everyone who knew her story, who thought that if they can steal her right to vote, they can do the same to me. When you've got to stand in a six-hour, seven-hour, eight-hour line, and forfeit a day's pay, hold your children out in the midst of the pandemic, it makes you think maybe it's not worth this effort, because the cost of voting has become too high.
Voter suppression works not only by blocking access but by the miasma of defeat that it sets upon communities. And because this is a communal activity, because democracy is a communal activity, it weakens our nation when entire segments of our population believe their voices are not wanted and believe they cannot be heard.
MR. CAPEHART: So then, Stacey, is the solution then mail-in voting? Would that make it easier?
MS. ABRAMS: Mail-in voting is one part of the solution, but let's start at the beginning. The United States is one of only a few democratized, industrialized nations that actually requires individual voter registration. Most nation's it's automatic and it's government led. And we have a few states in this country that have actually undertaken and taken on that responsibility to great effect. In states where you have real automatic registration, we know that voter participation goes up. And so, we need national automatic voter registration.
We also need same-day registration, because when people cross state lines the rules change, and they need to get reassigned. They need to get re-registered. That same-day registration means that if you don't remember to move within 29 days to Georgia, within 45 days to another state, that you are not stripped of your right to participation in elections. And so, we need automatic registration and same-day registration.
Mail-in voting is the second part of this. That addresses the part of can you get a ballot, can you cast it, and can it be counted. And that means mail-in voting, especially in the time of pandemic, says that you should be able to vote from home, that you should be able to sit with a ballot, do the research, understand.
I got an absentee ballot that was longer than a legal page, and front and back, and as someone who is fairly well versed in elections here in Georgia, I still had to do research. I still had to study and figure out who I needed to cast a ballot for.
We need to understand that voting is not only a civic responsibility, it needs to be an opportunity for education and engagement, and vote by mail makes it so.
But we also have to remember that people are going to have to vote in person. In-person voting is necessary, particularly for communities that are disabled, communities that have language barriers. If you are Native American and live on a reservation, your access to postal services is limited, and so often vote by mail is difficult and you have to go in person. We know that there are homeless people, but also people who have been displaced, particularly in recent days, by COVID-19, and we expect those eviction rates to go up. They need to be able to vote in person.
And so, we cannot leave behind in-person voting. We need to expand to at least 15 days of in-person early voting, and Election Day voting, that allows us to be safe. And if we pass the HEROES Act, which provides the $3.6 billion necessary to fully fund and scale up our elections across all 50 states, then for the first time we can truly have equal access to the right to vote for all eligible Americans in our country.
MR. CAPEHART: Stacey, the President of the United States has been taking to Twitter and in his campaign rallies, downplaying, criticizing, casting doubt on mail-in voting. Is he right or is he trying to lay the groundwork to delegitimize the results of the election of Joe Biden were to succeed in beating him?
MS. ABRAMS: First, he's lying. He is lying about the facts. In fact, today he tripped himself up by saying that he believes in and thinks that absentee balloting is fine, but he opposes strenuously mail-in voting because that's fraudulent, when absentee balloting, mail-in balloting are terms of art for the same practice. So, either he was lying then or he is lying now.
We know that vote by mail works. He knows that vote by mail works because he does so. His Cabinet does so. His family does so. He simply doesn't want voters he doesn't like to do so. And so, he is not only lying about the process, he is inflating, by dramatic numbers, the challenges.
If you use the Heritage Foundation's own numbers, and they are the largest purveyor, the most influential purveyor of this voter fraud myth, 1,300 examples of voter fraud exist in their database--1,300, and I think I'm rounding up. But we know that if you only use the number of Federal ballots cast between 2000 and 2020, you will get 625 million ballots cast--1,300 possible examples of voter fraud, none of which are actually--well, I will say this. I will give them some credit and say that yes, there have been some examples, but they are de minimis, and they have no effect on the outcome of elections.
But instead they have tried to inflate this miniscule set of challenges, often attributable to voter misunderstanding. Instead, voter suppression is real, it's persistent, it is relentless, and it is quantifiable.
And so, what Donald Trump is attempting to do is diminish participation in our elections, but also rig the election by stating that if he doesn't win it's because of this bad behavior. This bad behavior doesn't exist. If he loses the election it will be because people actually participated and they chose not to elect him.
MR. CAPEHART: Speaking of COVID--you mentioned COVID-19 before. Has the pandemic had an impact of any kind on your anti voter suppression efforts?
MS. ABRAMS: It has, but we anticipated that there would be a catastrophe in 2020, which is why we launched Fair Fight 2020 in 2019. We knew we would need to use the primaries as learning opportunities, to understand across these 18 states what voter suppression looked like in real time. And we've been able to gather those learnings.
We knew there would be something catastrophic. We did not anticipate a pandemic. But we were nimble and we were able to shift our responsibilities and shift our approach.
For example, we had helped build up voter protection departments and voter protection volunteer systems in Florida and Arizona, for example. Well, their ability to go to polling places was diminished because of COVID-19, but they were able to shift and do their work not only virtually but to make certain they were providing access to voters, so they had the information they needed.
We know that in the state of South Carolina, because of our voter protection teams, we were able to get a law passed in the primary. That voter protection team made certain that people could vote by mail, in June and in the runoff. We know that in New Hampshire we were able to secure the right for people to say that COVID-19 was an acceptable excuse in order to request an absentee ballot. And here in Georgia, we sent out more than 900,000 texts, to make certain that people understood what their right to vote was, how to turn in that mail-in ballot, how to vote in person, and how to get help if they need it.
And so, we have been--you know, we were all surprised by the pandemic but we were prepared for it.
MR. CAPEHART: Let's talk about voting machines, and I'm going to bring up a question from Lawrence Berger from New Mexico. And Lawrence is asking, "How can hacking of voter machines be prevented?"
MS. ABRAMS: The most effective way to prevent hacking a voter machine is to go with the safest, gold standard which is paper ballots. It is nearly impossible to hack a piece of paper, and it is an auditable way of voting.
But we do know that there will always need to be some type of machine assistance, particularly for those who have disabilities that require that they need machines in order to facilitate their participation and protect the privacy of their vote.
And so, we should try to diminish the likelihood of hacking, but what would also work is having a Senate and a Senate leader who actually believed in the integrity of our elections. Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell has stated, time and time again, that he is not concerned with the hacking of our elections, because he benefits from the undermining not only of the integrity of our process but participation in our process.
What Fair Fight is fighting for is making certain that every vote can be cast and every vote can be counted. We are a believer in democracy. Unfortunately, until a U.S. Senate under Republican leadership joins us, we cannot prevent hacking across this country.
MR. CAPEHART: Is there something you are asking campaigns to do, whether it's the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden's campaign, or even any of the Senate and congressional campaigns to do, to help either in mail-in voting or preventing voter suppression?
MS. ABRAMS: Absolutely. When we started this process back in 2019, I met with almost every major candidate running for the presidency, and we had deep conversations about the challenge of voter suppression. I've been very pleased that our organization has continued conversations with the Biden campaign, because they are very interested in how we can protect our elections and expand access to the right to vote to every eligible American.
But this is also a local issue, because each state has different laws. And I think that is one of the most important parts of "Our Time Is Now," really demystifying this notion that we have a single set of laws that govern our elections. We don't. In fact, in some states the rules change from county to county, which is not right.
And so, what we need is every level of candidate, whether you're running for the Senate, running for the House, running for a state legislative race, running for DA or judge or mayor or school board, make certain that you are leading--the leading voice on voter education. Make sure folks understand what the process is.
Number two, make certain you hold accountable your secretaries of state for doing the right thing. Regardless of party, democracy should not be partisan. We may be partisan in our selections but our elections have to be nonpartisan. And so, everyone running for office should be holding the secretaries of state accountable for making certain that every eligible person in your state can cast a ballot and have that ballot be counted.
And we also need to make certain that as candidates we are doing our best to lobby Congress, lobby the U.S. Senate to invest in these elections. We know that in the midst of COVID-19, we are not going to see this magical dissipation over the summer and be able to sail into the fall. Already we are seeing the second peak of the first wave, and the second wave is supposed to hit in November, or hit in the fall, and that means it will be in place in November. That means we need our cash-strapped states to get access to the resources they need. We need to scale up vote by mail, in particular, because for most states there has been a process in place--34 states allow no-excuses vote by mail, 16 require an excuse--but every state has it.
What we haven't seen is the scale and usage that five states have gotten used to--Utah, Oregon, Washington State, Colorado, and Hawaii. We have to be able to scale it up, because we have seen 50 percent increases in the use of vote by mail, and that means states have to have the equipment, the capacity, and the staffing for the vote by mail usage that we know is going to come in November.
MR. CAPEHART: Stacey, as you and I both know, Vice President Biden has made it clear that he is going to choose a woman to be his running mate. You've made it clear that you would love to be that person. If you were selected, what would be your priority on the ticket?
MS. ABRAMS: The responsibility of a vice presidential nominee or the Vice President is to follow the lead and direction of the President, to be the chief lieutenant. I think that I've made it very clear that my fundamental practice, as someone in public service, is defense of our democracy, not simply for the ethos of democracy but for its practical effect. If we want to see real change in our country on systemic racism then we have to fix our democracy and make certain that everyone who is eligible to vote can cast that ballot.
I would make it a priority, if I were permitted to do so, to focus on criminal justice reform as well as police reform, because we have to pay attention to the entirety of our justice system. But I would also be very interested in how our COVID recovery actually goes from the top to the bottom.
I created three organizations in the wake of 2018 --Fair Fight, to fight for our elections, Fair Count, to ensure that we have a safe and effective and accessible census and that every person is counted, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, which is looking at how we support economic policies in the South.
But we have just launched South Strong, which is looking at how COVID is ravaging working families in low-income communities, particularly in the South, and I know that in order for us to recover from COVID-19, for us to build a stronger America, we have to make certain we are paying attention to local, state, and Federal action, and bringing them together. And as someone who has done that work before, I am very interested in being part of how we not only recover but how we thrive after COVID-19.
MR. CAPEHART: And if you're not selected as the VP running mate, is there any position within a Biden administration that you would love to make a go for?
MS. ABRAMS: I think it's useless to speculate about that. What I am focused on is making certain that we have a President Joe Biden. He has demonstrated that he has the courage, the moral fortitude, the vision, and most importantly, he has competence. He actually knows how to run this country.
We have watched Donald Trump spend four years puppeting himself as a wannabe authoritarian, undermining our institutions--our democratic institutions, and doing his best to demonize our people. And I think that the contrast between Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden could not be clearer. This is a man who does not take a person for granted, who will do everything in his power to restore the soul of America, but will also be looking for the future of America, making certain that every person here, regardless of race, regardless of class, creed, sexual orientation, that they all believe that they are a part of our country. But he also understands the specific history of systemic racism in our nation, and will tackle that in a way that we know Donald Trump will not.
MR. CAPEHART: Last I saw, you were on television and you were asked if you had been contacted by the Biden campaign about possibly being on the ticket. Have you heard from anyone within the Biden campaign about the vice presidential selection process?
MS. ABRAMS: If you listen to the clip, I was asked a specific question about a reporter's sources. I was saying I've not talked to that reporter's sources; I had not heard from that reporter's sources. But I will say that any conversations about the actual vetting process need to be directed to the Biden campaign.
MR. CAPEHART: And final question for you, in case you are not selected as the VP nominee, would you make another run for governor against Brian Kemp?
MS. ABRAMS: My focus right now is making sure that we have an election that we can win, because every American who is eligible to participate can do so, that we have a census that is accurate because that is going to set the agenda for the next decade, and that we have absolutely put our attention towards economic recovery for our country. And my mission is going to be to look for the best position from which I can do that work. Whether it is as the leader of three national nonprofits or running for office again, I will make that decision when it comes. But my mission will never waver, and that is helping to fix and increase access in the United States of America.
MR. CAPEHART: Stacey, I'm going to ask you one more question before we go. I don't know if anyone realizes this or knows this, but you write romance novels under the pseudonym, Selena Montgomery. Right? Do you have another one in the works, or did "Our Time Is Now" take up all of your time?
MS. ABRAMS: No. I stopped writing romance back in 2010, because I launched a new company called NOWaccount, I became Democratic leader, and in order to stay in romance you tend to have to take multiyear contracts. I could not meet my contract obligations, and so Selena is on an extended hiatus, although there is a third book in a trilogy that my mother and my sister and some friends of mine keep threatening me, if I don't get that done I may not be able to write again. And so, I'm hopeful to get to that at some point soon, but that's going to be probably Selena's swan song.
MR. CAPEHART: Stacey Abrams, founder and chair of Fair Fight, author of "Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America." Thank you very much for coming to Washington Post Live.
MS. ABRAMS: Thank you for having me.
MR. CAPEHART: On Tuesday, June 30th--that's tomorrow--at 10:30 a.m., Congresswoman Lauren Underwood of Illinois, a registered nurse, and Every Mother Counts founder, Christy Turlington Burns, discuss the state of maternal and infant health in the United States, the high rate of pregnancy complications for black women, and how community leaders, health care workers, and governments are supporting new mothers and their children in the era of COVID-19.
Also, I'll be back tomorrow with the filmmakers and stars of "Little America," a new Apple TV+ anthology series that dramatizes true stories of immigrants across the country. Join the executive producers and writers, Lee Eisenberg, Kumail Nanjiani, and Emily V. Gordon.
On Wednesday, my colleague, Heather Long, will interview Mary Daly, President and CEO of the San Francisco Federal Reserve.
I'm Jonathan Capehart, opinion writer for The Washington Post. Thank you for tuning in to Washington Post Live.
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