Former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams said the government’s ability to ensure that everyone has a safe way to vote in the November election will indicate how seriously it has responded to calls for racial equality and justice in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Abrams, who is contending to be presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate, is a leading voting rights activist who challenged her defeat in 2018 in the Georgia governor’s race to Republican Brian Kemp. Abrams claimed after losing the close race that Kemp, then Georgia’s secretary of state, engaged in voter suppression.
“One of the challenges facing our nation is a deep suspicion about the value of every voice and the value of every person in our nation, and to the extent that we know a disproportionate number of those dispossessed in our process are people of color, namely African Americans, it is a critical moment for us to demonstrate that their access to the ballot will not be impeded because of situations beyond their control,” said Abrams.
Abrams, who is black, spoke during a voting rights hearing Wednesday by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties.
As the chairwoman for Fair Fight Action, Abrams said she is heavily involved in the debate on whether to mandate states to allow voters to vote by mail in the fall because some voters may fear voting in-person due to the threat of the coronavirus.
“We face a public health crisis, an economic disaster, continued distrust in our justice system, and a coordinated assault on access to our democracy,” said Abrams.
Black people have accounted for a disproportionate share of the more than 100,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the country. There is concern that black voters may be less likely to vote in person, where exposure to the virus is possible.
The solution is not only to provide mail-in ballots across all states but also to allow early in-person voting, said Myrna Perez, director for the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
President Trump in recent weeks has criticized mail-in voting, claiming it is riddled with fraud and is not secure. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, a supporter of the Trump administration, said it is a “real threat to the integrity of our elections” because ballots can be mailed to the wrong address and may get intercepted and because voters could be influenced by others. He said mailing ballots makes it harder to detect vote-buying schemes.
“Public health is cited as justification for mail ballots but is absent when talking about the massive ballot harvesting schemes being foisted upon or the attempt to foist ballot harvesting schemes on Americans,” Fitton said.
Dale Ho, director of the voting rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union, disagreed.
“If we truly believe that no American should have to choose between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote, we must follow the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s] recommendation to allow all Americans to use voting methods that minimize direct contact with other people and reduce crowd size at polling locations,” Ho said. “We must help our fellow citizens and states shift to more early and absentee voting than ever.”
