Stacey Abrams: The Woman Behind Flipping Georgia Blue

People around the world are still reeling and celebrating from the outcome of the US election.  The new government brings a hopeful future for the ‘States, but it didn’t come easily. It was a long and uncertain battle, with the Biden-Harris team finally coming out victorious. Joe Biden was able to flip 5 states from red (meaning the population predominantly voted for the republican party) to blue (meaning predominantly voting for the democratic party). 

Image Source – TheNewYorkTimes.com

One of these five states was Georgia, a state known for being a majority republican state. Biden was able to flip it to blue and became the first democrat in 28 years to do so; Bill Clinton was the last person to accomplish this, in 1992. Gaining Georgia solidified Biden’s presidential win and it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of a woman named Stacey Abrams. 

Stacey Abrams Image Source – TheHuffingtonPost.com

Stacey is an African-American politician who has made it her mission to eliminate voter suppression. Voter suppression is when citizens who are eligible, are prevented from exercising their right to vote; this can happen in many ways, either legally or illegally. Voter suppression is one of the primary reasons why certain southern states have resulted in being known as “Republican States”. 

Historically, there were many examples of black communities falling victims to voter suppression. For example, in the 1870’s when people of all races were finally given the right to vote, southern states ended up having an equal or higher turnout of black people, compared to other races. The government saw this as a threat and began to implement policies to suppress black voters and make it harder for them to register to vote, or to vote at all. To put it in perspective, Louisiana went from having 130,000 registered African-American voters, to only 1,543 in a few years. Voter suppression is still a major issue today but luckily, there are people like Stacey Abrams to combat it.

Stacey has a background in politics and knows how the system works. In 2018, Abrams was running for Governor and actually made history as the first African-American woman to mount a bid for Governor. Her odds were tough since she was running against Brian Kemp – Georgia’s long-time Secretary of State.

Stacey ended up losing by a mere 1.4% which may have been due to the faults of the system. During his six years in office, Brain Kemp and his team cancelled the voter registrations of more than 1 million Georgia residents. His team stated that they were cancelling the registrations due to “inactivity” or “error”, but many saw this as a form of voter suppression and saw over one million citizens being deprived of their right to vote. 

Ms. Abrams was one of the people who recognized this. She saw her loss as an opportunity to help her community. In a speech after the results came out, she congratulated Mr.Kemp on his win and announced that she would be launching a new non-profit organization that would combat Voter Suppression and stop these “voter purges”. Instead of running for Governor again, Stacey Abrams dedicated all her time to this goal.

By the time the 2020 elections arrived, she’d successfully brought out 800,000 new voters in Georgia alone. Since voter suppression mainly affects the black and hispanic population, this helped to bring out more democratic voters (It was calculated that nine out of ten black voters opt to vote for the democratic candidate). Therefore, the surplus of new voters from the minority communities set a major foundation for Biden, the democratic candidate, to hold a lead in Georgia and win the whole election. 

When interviewed about her success, Stacey stated “We have all been working at this for more than a decade. There are dozens of organizations and hundreds of people who’ve made eliminating voter suppression their primary mission”. 

This just goes to show how many people are constantly working behind the scenes to bring justice. For example, Kruzshander Scott, a woman who had received constant threats during the election as she publicly worked to bring out new voters and help organize registration, making it more accessible in her historically black community in Jacksonville, Florida. Another example is Brittany Smalls, a voting rights activist who has dedicated her life to educating voters in her neighbourhood in Philadelphia, empowering her community and showing them their votes matter. 

That is exactly what the flipping of states in this election has done. The population of new voters who previously had their rights suppressed are now able to see what their voting can do and how much power they hold. The men and women who worked tirelessly to help others gain this power are to be thanked.

In her electoral victory speech, Kamala Harris thanked the women who paved the way for her and worked and fought for equality for all – no matter the race or gender, “including the Black women who are too often overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy”, she stated. Stacey Abrams is a testament to this and should be recognized for her major success and how she changed what people see as what is possible.