Stacey Abrams is being celebrated across the country as she is being credited with flipping the state of Georgia blue — something which has not been done in almost three decades.
It has been 28 years since Georgia handed its 16 electoral votes to Democratic president Bill Clinton in 1992 — but it looks as though they will be going to Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, thanks to Abrams’ tireless efforts to tackle voter suppression.
Abrams ran for governor of the state in 2018 against Brian Kemp but narrowly lost the race after his camp worked hard to prevent Black Georgians from voting.
According to an investigation conducted by the Associated Press, on the eve of the election, Kemp, who then served as Georgia’s secretary of state, mass-canceled more than a million voter registrations between 2012 and 2018. He then froze an estimated 53,000 registrations — essentially silencing Black voters.
After having the governorship stolen from her, Abrams immediately got to work, setting up Fair Fight, a campaign to “ensure every American has a voice in our election system through programs such as Fair Fight 2020, an initiative to fund and train voter protection teams in 20 battleground states.”
And her efforts have not been in vain.
Although the final results have not yet been submitted, Georgia is bluer than it’s been in decades. Abrams’ hard work ensured that members of the Black community were able to cast their votes, with many young voters hitting the polls for the first time.
“We know that 10 years ago they wrote off the state of Georgia,” said Abrams, via USA Today. “But since that time we have been growing and growing … and now we’re grown! We are ready to be the blue state that we were meant to be.”
