voter suppression
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Stacey Abrams Will Not Run for U.S. Senate in 2020; Millions Sigh, 'But What About President, Though?'
We still don’t know exactly what Stacey Abrams has in mind for future office, but we can at least rule one possibility out: a U.S. Senate seat in 2020. Early Tuesday morning, the Georgia Democrat announced she will not run to be a Georgia representative, despite “a fierce lobbying effort by party leaders,” the Washington…
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Tennessee Just Passed a Bill That Could Suppress Black Votes
While the results of the 2016 presidential election ushered in the apocalypse, the 2018 midterms saw increased political awareness throughout the country, as hyper-vigilant voters committed to bringing order to chaos and record numbers at the polls. “Record numbers” is a gross understatement, considering an estimated 113 million people rocked the vote—the highest total for…
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Rigged Shows How an Organized, Well-Funded System of Voter Suppression Doesn’t Bode Well for Black Folks—or Democracy
You know how the extrajudicial killings of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Philando Castile moved so many of us to action—whether it was creating art, taking to the streets, or being more involved civically? Right. Well, there was another turning point in American history that spurned some to action as well, even though to most,…
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Georgia Is One Vote Away From Stealing Elections for the Next 20 Years
When writer Ian Fleming created super spy James Bond, he knew a good villain was just as important as the hero of the story. Fleming based many of Bond’s villains on actual people, because let’s be honest, regular people do some pretty horrible things. Wholesale evil schemes don’t have to come from the mind of…
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Congress Takes a Field Trip to Investigate Voter Suppression in Georgia
ATLANTA—When members of Congress heard stories about Georgia’s historic vote-stealing, the details sounded so absurdly evil, apparently an entire congressional subcommittee said, “I’ve got to see this for myself!” Chaired by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the Committee on House Administration is, among other things, tasked with the administration, oversight and legislation involving federal elections. Elections…
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Exclusive: Thousands of Black Votes in Georgia Disappeared and No One Can Explain It
Voter suppression in Georgia was one of the most discussed issues during the 2018 midterm elections. Front and center in the debate stood Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a longtime voting-rights activist who had dedicated much of her career to fighting for every citizen’s right to vote. Abrams was also running to become the state’s…
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Stacey Abrams Exemplifies the Kwanzaa Principle of Imani—Consciously Moving Forward Against Forces Seen and Unseen
The last day of Kwanzaa is represented by the principle of Imani, or faith—the essence of what has gotten us through when there seemed no way out. Black people, in general, are a spiritual people. But we are also a people of faith, which is not necessarily attached to formal religion. In the words of…
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Nobody Should Be Talking About Beto and Gillum in 2020 Until We Understand Stacey Abrams in 2018
This past September at a Congressional Black Caucus party, I caught up with one of the main players of the “Stacey Abrams for Governor” campaign. I’d been covering the Georgia election from day one so I had a pretty honest relationship with most of the team. At that point, Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp had…
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Brian Kemp Is Getting Called to the Principal's Office to Explain How He Stole Georgia's Gubernatorial Election From Stacey Abrams
Remember that time when Brian Kemp, while serving as Georgia’s secretary of state, oversaw the same 2018 gubernatorial race that he eventual won? And how he used every voter suppression tactic imaginable—from understaffed polls, to purging hundreds of thousands of voters from state rolls, to tossing out provisional ballots, to ensuring that voting machines were…
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A Little Bit of Justice: GOP's Lone Black Senator Does the Right Thing, Opposes Controversial Trump Pick
I still don’t get why it took so long or why he seemed to struggle with what should have been a simple decision—if justice, not politics, was the goal—but Tim Scott, a U.S. senator from South Carolina, has announced he will oppose the nomination of Thomas Farr. That means the Scott I think I know—the…