The right response to Republican voter suppression is an aggressive, deliberate strategy of voter expansion that combines new laws to make voting easier, with a political strategy to make Republicans pay a steep political price for stealing elections.
“Stacey Abrams isn’t just the future of the Democratic Party. She’s the future of the country, and fuck, she better win.” She didn’t win. She got more votes than any Democrat—including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton—in Georgia history.
Yet, despite all of her talent, charisma, and broad appeal, Stacey Abrams is not governor of Georgia. This was a huge loss for the state of Georgia, the Democratic Party, and the country. She would have been the first African American woman governor in American history, and it would have happened in the heart of the new South. What a powerful symbol.
But in truth, she didn’t lose the election. It was stolen from her. Electoral larceny. Her opponent, Brian Kemp, just happened to be the Georgia secretary of state who just happened to be the person in charge of the election. And boy did he take advantage of that fact.
Several months before the election, he purged tens of thousands of voters off the rolls—a group that was overwhelmingly African American and most likely supporters of Abrams. This purge came on top of nearly seven hundred thousand voters who were purged in 2017. This effort was about making it harder for a Democrat to win.
What happened in Georgia is not an aberration; it’s both a story about what has happened to Democrats and a warning about how much worse it’s going to get. As Republicans become more of an electoral minority, their efforts to suppress the majority from voting are only going to get worse.
Fighting voter suppression efforts in the courts is important but ultimately not sufficient. The right response to Republican voter suppression is an aggressive, deliberate strategy of voter expansion that combines new laws to make voting easier, with a political strategy to make Republicans pay a steep political price for stealing elections.
