Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

by Stacey Abrams

This is perfectly illustrated by what occurred in Hancock County, Georgia, when the Board of Elections and Registration dispatched deputy sheriffs to challenge the voting rights of black voters in the county ahead of a key municipal election in 2015. Hancock sits in central Georgia, where law enforcement arrested blacks at 3.3 times the rate of nonblacks.2 In the weeks ahead of the vote, deputies pulled up alongside black men as they walked on public streets or knocked on their doors to demand proof of residency. Barry Fleming, a Republican state representative and author of several bills to restrict access to voting, serves as the county attorney for Hancock. In an interview with the New York Times about the challenges to black voters, he dismissed the process as “more about politics and power than race.”