The Georgia Democrat’s comments on CNN Sunday come amid a building showdown over GOP efforts to make voting harder in multiple states following former President Donald Trump’s loss and his lies about ballot fraud, and Washington Democrats’ vast federal election and civil rights bill that would counter such efforts. Flurries of bills have been introduced in the key battleground states that decided the 2020 election and were the focus of Trump’s attempts to undermine it, but Republicans are also ramping up in Texas and other strongholds that Democrats have lately tried to challenge.
Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia and a voting rights activist who helped President Joe Biden become the first Democrat in nearly three decades to carry the state, has been in the trenches, getting people out to exercise a right that is again under threat. The clashes over who can vote, where and when could define the future of America’s political system and therefore represents one of the most important issues currently before the country. Many of the disputes between Republicans and Democrats concern rules and procedures that were introduced to make voting — the core and vital bedrock of a democratic system — easier and more universal amid the pandemic.
“I do absolutely agree that it’s racist. It is a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie,” Abrams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” referring to historic state and local laws that institutionalized racism and segregation in the 19th and 20th centuries.
“The only connection that we can find is that more people of color voted and it changed the outcome of elections in a direction Republicans do not like,” Abrams said, referring to recent elections in Georgia that helped President Joe Biden win the White House, handed Democrats control of a 50-50 Senate and delivered the only red-to-blue House district flip that wasn’t because of redistricting.
Efforts to curtail Sunday voting particularly target Black…
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