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

by Stacey Abrams

By undermining confidence in the system, modern-day suppression has swapped rabid dogs and cops with billy clubs for restrictive voter ID and tangled rules for participation. And those who are most vulnerable to suppression become the most susceptible to passing on that reluctance to others.

But each of those amendments contained a loophole for suppression: leaving implementation to the states, particularly the ones most hostile to inclusion.

We are strongest when we see the most vulnerable in our society, bear witness to their struggles, and then work to create systems to make it better.

We must dispel myths that give primacy to the archetype of a working-class white man in Ohio who voted for Reagan in 1980, and instead expand our polity to recognize that his daughter might be married to a Kenyan woman who is waiting for permanent residence and their first child in Arkansas.

The vast, invasive, and complex electoral system controls everything—from determining the quality of our drinking water to the lawfulness of abortion rights to the wages stolen from a domestic worker. The voting system is not just political; it is economic and social and educational. It is omnipresent and omniscient. And it is fallible.

I propose that Congress should authorize the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, settling any concerns about whether it would be constitutional. More important, a federal signal from Congress may speed passage by states that have hesitated to agree. By doing so, voters will finally have the ability to vote directly for president without hoping the rest of their state agrees.

Fear is a given, but fear is not a reason to vote. Hope is a reason to vote: a visible, visceral compassion for those who worry for the future and fret about the now.

we have to stop thinking about elections as being about candidates.

Winning is about ensuring that people who do not think they matter in our system believe that they can lift their voices up.