Lead from the Outside: on Government Reform


Elections are rigged when poor communities' voting hindered

In elections, our nation has fought a lifelong battle about who gets to have any say in the outcome--and set the terms of the next battle. Race, gender, and sex have been constant markers of access, beginning with the Constitution. My election was no different. Poor communities found themselves without equipment for voting, including missing power cords and antiquated machines. Other voters arrived at their polling stations only to be turned away because they'd been illegally purged or because the poll workers didn't have enough paper for extra ballots. Some stood in hour-long lines, while their compatriots had to give up and go back to work or risk a family's already meager paycheck. This is how the game of elections gets rigged.
Source: Lead from the Outside, by Stacey Abrams, p. xiv Mar 26, 2019

Investigated for registering 86,000 voters in one year

In 2014, I raised more than $3.5 million, and we submitted more than 86,000 voter applications to the state for processing. Which was when the new Georgia plan was placed under investigation by the secretary of state, who questioned how our organization could have registered so many people of color in such a short span of time without some misconduct. Yet, of the voter registration applications we submitted, an estimated 40,000 registration forms were missing from the rolls on election day. For the next two years, my team and I would battle not only the accusations of the state, but also questions from our allies about what had transpired. Eventually, we proved the secretary of state had illegally cancelled 35,000 registrations, including ours, and no wrongdoing had occurred on our side of the process. The secretary of state closed his investigation, admitting we had done nothing illegal. Better still, we've already registered more than 200,000 of our voters on the way to the 800,000 voters.
Source: Lead from the Outside, by Stacey Abrams, p. 53-54 Mar 26, 2019

Register 75,000 out of 800,000 unregistered people of color

In the winter of 2013, Georgia had more than 800,000 unregistered people of color--a community the size of South Dakota who who did not have the legal ability to vote despite being eligible. Politicians discussed how distressed they were by the sheer number. Finally, I decided to launch a non-profit voter registration effort to target these potential voters, whose decisions could shift the balance of power in the state if they participated en masse. My plan to register 75,000 potential voters in 2014
Source: Lead from the Outside, by Stacey Abrams, p. 54 Mar 26, 2019

  • The above quotations are from Lead from the Outside
    How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change
    by Stacey Abrams     .
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Gubernatorial Debates 2020:
DE: vs.Carney(incumbent) vs.Williams(D)
IN: vs.Holcomb(incumbent) vs.Melton(D) vs.Myers(D)
MO: Parson(incumbent) vs.Galloway(D) vs.Neely(R)
MT: Bullock(retiring) vs.Fox(R) vs.Perry(R) vs.Gianforte(R) vs.Stapleton(R) vs.Olszewski(R) vs.Neill(D) vs.Schreiner(D) vs.Cooney(D) vs.Williams(D)
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NJ:
Murphy(D) vs.Ciattarelli(R)
VA:
Northam(D,term-limited) vs.Herring(D) vs.Chase(R) vs.Fairfax(D)

Gubernatorial Debates 2019:
KY:
Bevin(R) vs.Goforth(R,lost primary) vs.Adkins(D,lost primary) vs.Beshear(D) vs.Edelen(D,lost primary)
LA:
Edwards(D) vs.Rispone(R) vs.Abraham(R) vs.Kennedy(R,declined)
MS:
Bryant(R,retiring) vs.Foster(R) vs.Hood(D) vs.Reeves(R) vs.Waller(R)
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