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Stacey Abrams Is Playing the Long Game for Our Democracy

And she’s playing to win.

Stacey Abrams speaking at a DNC gala in June.Credit...Audra Melton for The New York Times

Dr. Price is a political scientist who specializes in contemporary black politics, public opinion and political rhetoric.

Everywhere she goes, Stacey Abrams is treated like a rock star — or a presidential candidate. I and all my friends wanted her to jump into the presidential race. Instead, she’s doing something more important. She’s creating an apparatus to fight voter suppression across the country, a prize that’s essential to a fair and functioning democracy.

“No matter which ones of our nominees win, if we haven’t fought this scourge,” she told a reporter, “if we haven’t pushed back against Moscow Mitch and his determination to block any legislation that would cure our voting machines, then we are all in a world of trouble.” (She remains open to being a vice-presidential pick down the line.)

For at least the next 15 months, her organization will train staff members in 20 competitive and battleground states to help fix inaccurate voter rolls, address shortages of voting machines and provisional ballots and formalize the rules around counting absentee ballots. They will also work to increase participation in the 2020 census.

This will have even more of an impact than a presidential run. Her work on voter suppression could reshape the electoral landscape so it resembles the years after Voting Rights Act of 1965, when new constituencies were created and a new political leadership class emerged. Her work could help get more Democrats elected at the local and state levels and grease the pipeline to the presidency for future generations. That’s also true for governors and senators.

Ms. Abrams is also seeking to empower citizens at the local levels of government. Seemingly small decisions — which cases will be tried, which schools will be shut down, how many seats are on the water board — often have an enormous impact on the lives of people of color. Stronger voter protections for those hyper-local races could make a big difference.

The unique skills and experiences she acquired while running her campaign set her up for success. She flipped the formula on how politicians usually run for office. She trusted the expertise and networks of women of color who are civic engagement organizers, pouring resources into their efforts early on. She expanded the electorate. She talked about race and identity on the stump. She traversed the state, speaking to white people in counties that hadn’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson. She explained to them why her diverse coalition would also benefit them, whether or not they chose to vote for her.

As a result, more white Democrats in Georgia voted for her than any for any candidate since Bill Clinton. Her campaign doubled youth turnout; tripled Latino turnout; and tripled Asian-Pacific Islander turnout. In 2014, 1.1 million Georgians voted on the Democratic side. But four years later, 1.2 million African-Americans voted for her.

But the thing that kept Ms. Abrams from the governorship is the thing that is keeping other African-Americans and people of color from office in many places — voter suppression. “My mission is to make certain that no one has to go through in 2020 what we went through in 2018,” she said in a speech this week.

Her opponent, Brian Kemp, had created such an obstacle course of discrimination, no one can really say that the election was fair. As secretary of state during the campaign, he held 53,000 voter registrations hostage under the exact match law, which penalized typos, missing hyphens and other tiny things. Seven out of 10 of those registrations came from black voters, who made up only around 30 percent of eligible voters. He purged rolls, reduced the number of polling machines and did many other things to limit the impact of black voters in the state. Incidentally, he molded the electoral landscape to favor him. Sadly, Ms. Abrams also has experience going toe-to-toe with politicians who are determined to block minorities from the ballot box.

Ms. Abrams’s focus on the state and local levels is crucial because the 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakened the federal government’s ability to protect people of color from voter suppression. Without the federal safety net of preclearance, many states are free to enact discriminatory voter restrictions and find new ways to diminish and dilute minority votes. That leaves teams of lawyers, organizers, citizens and elected officials to fight voter suppression state-by-state. But if African-Americans and other minority voters are to place their confidence in anyone’s ability to facilitate this movement, it would be Stacey Abrams.

While Barack Obama’s presidency remains a high point in African-American politics, his success arguably catalyzed a renewed effort among people who want to make sure he will be the only black president for the foreseeable future and that other minority groups will never get a chance.

In the wake of his 2008 victory, Republican state officials immediately enacted burdensome and unnecessary voting restrictions. And in 2018 we saw the full effects of the Supreme Court’s devastating decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Voter suppression played a key role in narrow Democratic losses by Ms. Abrams, Andrew Gillum and Beto O’Rourke — three Deep South states that could be in play for Democrats with a fair voting process.

That’s why Ms. Abrams’s new movement is vital. The work of building and strengthening our democracy is often done by independent third-party groups, run by women of color, who are expert at long-term organizing, canvassing and turnout, like the New Florida Majority and the New Virginia Majority. Their work benefits every citizen, regardless of political affiliation. Ms. Abrams and others are laying the foundation for a more diverse and equitable electorate and political leadership. She deserves all of our support.

Melanye Price (@ProfMTP), a professor of political science at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, is the author, most recently, of “The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race.”

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