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♪ ♪
NEWSWOMAN: It might be a race
for the Governor’s Mansion in Georgia,
but this is one that the entire country is watching.
NEWSWOMAN: And if ever one vote counted,
it certainly is going to count in this particular race.
CROWD (chanting): Stacey! Stacey! Stacey!
-Stacey! Stacey! Stacey! -(cheering)
NEWSWOMAN: The controversy surrounding
Georgia’s governor’s race is not dying down.
Both candidates dug in today.
NEWSWOMAN: Republican Brian Kemp
and Democrat Stacey Abrams are locked in a virtual dead heat.
NEWSWOMAN: Everybody wants to know
what’s happening in Georgia.
Still a toss-up there, as we’re waiting
for a number of votes to come in.
They believe there are tens of thousands of absentee ballots
that have not yet been counted.
NEWSWOMAN: Voter suppression has become
a national talking point,
and Brian Kemp has become a focal point.
All of the votes in this race have not been counted.
BRIAN KEMP: On Tuesday, as you know, we earned
a clear and convincing victory at the ballot box,
and today we’re beginning the transition process.
NEWSMAN: Kemp was leading
Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams
by a narrow margin, and it grew more and more narrow
in the days following the election.
Abrams filed multiple lawsuits
but ultimately dropped out of the race.
STACEY ABRAMS: I acknowledge
that former Secretary of State Brian Kemp
will be certified as the victor
in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
But to watch an elected official
who claims to represent the people and the state
baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression
of the people’s democratic right to vote
has been truly appalling.
So, let’s be clear.
This is not a speech of concession.
Because concession means to acknowledge
an action is right, true or proper.
As a woman of conscience and faith,
I cannot concede that.
(beeps)
♪ ♪
ABRAMS: The fundamental power of democracy
lies in the right to vote.
If you protect that right,
you create possibilities for everything else.
Too many Americans take for granted the right to vote
and don’t understand that
unless we fight for the right to vote,
unless we try to include as many people as possible,
our democracy is put at risk.
CAROL ANDERSON: This right to vote is bloody.
It is contested.
And the reason it is contested is because the vote matters.
♪ ♪
♪ Register, inform yourself and vote ♪
♪ A country doesn’t run itself ♪
♪ Every voter is a help... ♪
ABRAMS: There are those who argue
that America is not a democracy or a republic.
We are a democratic republic
because we use democracy to elect our representatives.
♪ ♪
FRANCES FOX PIVEN: What is democracy?
Democracy is a system in which the voters
choose the people that govern them.
I vote for every, every election.
I don’t care what it is.
I don’t miss voting.
And my voice, I want to be heard.
That’s what it’s supposed to be.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is determined
to push for mail-in voting across the country
in the next relief bill.
DONALD TRUMP: The things they had in there were crazy.
Uh, they had things, uh,
levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it,
you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.
When elected officials feel like they may not have
the power anymore, they have two choices.
They can either be more responsive to those they lead,
or they can eliminate the people
they have to answer to.
I registered to vote at DMV about nine months ago.
I found out three weeks ago that I wasn’t registered.
MICHAEL WALDMAN: Progress doesn’t only
go in one direction.
We’ve had expansions of American democracy,
but we’ve also had times when things have moved backwards,
where people have lost the right to vote.
DIANE SAWYER: A monumental decision by the Supreme Court,
changing the Voting Rights Act,
the law of the land for 48 years.
WALDMAN: History is never a straight line.
It’s always a fight.
JAYLA ALLEN: If everybody’s vote
was important and equal,
then why are certain people
in certain areas, of certain backgrounds,
why is their vote being limited?
-CROWD: We’re here to stay! -NEWSMAN: Now, some call it
a safeguard for the integrity of New Hampshire elections.
Others see it as a political ploy
to try and keep voters away from the polls.
ANN COULTER: I just think it should be
a little more difficult to vote.
There’s nothing unconstitutional
about-about literacy tests.
The fight over voting rights is ultimately about power.
Districts have been scrambled
all over the state of Texas in the past,
and they elected white people and nobody questioned it.
INTERVIEWER: Do you believe that
democracy exists in America?
Well, I’ve lived in America all my life,
and I’ve never seen democracy yet,
so I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
People in Washington know nothing about reality.
They know nothing about what’s happening
to little people in the community.
But you add it all up, and all of a sudden,
p-people look at their government,
think, "It doesn’t represent me."
And in many cases these days, uh,
for a lot of reasons, it really doesn’t.
NEWSWOMAN: In Wisconsin, voters headed
to the polls today, the first state
to hold a major election with in-person voting
in the midst of a stay-at-home order.
Do they expect us to go against public safety?
The United States is the only country
that makes it so difficult for communities to own their power
by requiring them to jump through hoops
to simply participate in basic elections.
It’s pernicious because it convinces you
that maybe it’s not worth trying again.
And when entire communities become convinced
that the process is not for them,
we lose their participation in our nation’s future,
and that’s dangerous to everyone.
ANDERSON: You cannot understand where we are right now
unless you understand the history of voting rights
and the struggle for voting rights.
Past is prologue.
Those forces that are systematically determined
to keep American citizens from voting,
they have been laying the seeds over time.
When we started as a country, it wasn’t really anything
like what we would consider a democracy.
Only white men who owned property
had the right to vote.
That was a very small segment of the country even then.
The Constitution begins with the words, "We the people."
And yet, who were the people?
It doesn’t include slaves. It doesn’t include women.
Doesn’t include Native Americans.
Doesn’t include young people.
So, the notion of "the people" is very restricted.
ANDERSON: You won’t find sitting anywhere
in the articles of the Constitution where it says,
"American citizens have the right to vote."
When you have the-the founders
writing in the language of Enlightenment,
dealing with getting rid of monarchy
and getting rid of kings
and-and having this wonderful, beautiful republic,
and then you have six percent who are eligible to vote.
White male property owners.
It tells you we had a lot of work to do.
♪ ♪
ABRAMS: I grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi.
My dad was a shipyard worker.
My mom was the head librarian at William Carey College.
Both of my parents were first in their family.
My mom’s the only one of her siblings
to finish high school and, let alone, go to grad school.
My dad was the first man in his family to go to college.
♪ ♪
My mom and dad were very prolific.
I am the second of six children.
My parents were very intentional with us.
And we had three jobs.
You had to go to church.
Had to go to church.
And you had to go to school.
Go to school and take care of each other.
And in the meantime, you had to do something
-to help someone else. -Help somebody else.
ABRAMS: We would volunteer
at soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
If there was someone in need, my parents found a way
to make sure we were there to help.
Which was odd to us because,
we would point out, we were poor, too.
Why are we serving other people?
They would say, "Having nothing
is not an excuse for doing nothing."
CAROLYN: And I’ll tell you what,
when those kids were growing up,
every time we voted, we took them with us,
and they saw us cast our ballot.
ABRAMS: And we’d sort of trail out of the voting booth
like Make Way for Ducklings
because there were so many of us.
But they wanted us to see them in the act of casting a vote.
♪ ♪
My parents were admitted to Emory University in 1989
to become United Methodist ministers.
I was 15, so I was unhappy with the world around me,
so I was very excited about moving to Atlanta.
I attended Avondale High School,
and I became the valedictorian of my high school.
When you’re valedictorian in Georgia,
you get invited to meet the governor of Georgia.
It was a Sunday morning.
We got dressed, put on our best clothes
and got on the bus because we didn’t have a car.
We get to the guard gate, and the guard looks at me,
and he looks at my parents, and he says,
"This is a private event. You don’t belong here."
My dad says, "No, no, this is my daughter Stacey.
She’s one of the valedictorians."
But the guard doesn’t check his checklist.
He instead... I remember very clearly
him looking over our shoulders at the bus that’s pulling away,
and he looks back at us, and he basically says,
he’s like, "No," like, "you don’t belong here."
The story he told himself was that
these three Black people getting off a bus,
they can’t possibly belong in the Governor’s Mansion
on this day that’s celebrating success and opportunity.
-♪ Let ’em know ♪ -♪ Uh, yeah, we winnin’ now ♪
♪ Yeah, we risin’ to the top, new beginning now ♪
-♪ Yeah ♪ -♪ And we never gonna stop ♪
♪ Yeah, we grinnin’ now ♪
♪ Never been here, wow ♪
♪ But we in here now, holla black, yeah... ♪
ABRAMS: My parents had a very engaged
and spirited discussion with this gentleman
about his decision-making skills,
about his reading comprehension.
Robert had to have a few choice words.
It was explained to him in a certain way that,
if you want to stay healthy...
-Well... -...you look at the list.
I won’t go no further than that.
♪ Yeah, we’re here now, uh, uh ♪
♪ Yeah, we’re here now... ♪
ABRAMS: What I remember about that day
is not meeting the governor.
Don’t remember meeting my fellow valedictorians.
All I remember is this man standing in front
of the most powerful place in Georgia,
telling me I don’t belong inside.
And that was my first encounter with the governor of Georgia.
♪ Stand up, stand up, stand up ♪
♪ No time to hide, we can’t be denied, nah. ♪
It never occurred to me to think I could be governor.
I had simply never seen it.
When I started running,
that story for me was an important narrative
because it reminded people that,
just as I was told I don’t belong here,
so much of what voting is about is whether you belong,
whether you have value.
James Baldwin said that "people are trapped in history
and history is trapped in people."
We can’t escape where we come from,
but it’s our responsibility
to reshape what that story looks like.
ERIC FONER: After the Civil War,
the number-one question was: What is gonna replace slavery?
What system of labor? What system of politics?
What system of race relations?
Reconstruction is the nation’s effort
to come to terms with the abolition of slavery.
ANDERSON: They were trying to figure out,
"How do we heal this nation?
How do we stitch it back together?"
And then you’ve got four million freed people.
"How do we do this?"
FONER: The three amendments-- the 13th, 14th and 15th--
were not just small-scale changes
in an existing structure.
They made the Constitution, for the first time,
a vehicle through which people could claim greater equality.
They actually transformed the Constitution
into something new and different.
They took slavery out of the Constitution,
where it had been embedded.
They created for the first time
a national definition of citizenship
and insisted that all those citizens
and other persons in the country
had to be treated equally.
And they mandated that African American men
must have the right to vote.
DAVID PEPPER: That amendment in 1870 said
the right to vote "shall not be denied or abridged"
on the basis "of race, color
or previous condition of servitude."
ANDERSON: The state shall not abridge the right to vote
"on account of race, color
or previous condition of servitude."
FONER: The idea of a national standard for voting
was very controversial.
During the debates on the 15th Amendment,
even Northern states wanted to keep control
of the voting qualifications, because there were
people in their state they didn’t want voting.
And it’s not about blacks.
California and Oregon did not ratify the 15th Amendment,
because they were afraid that
it might let Chinese people vote.
But by 1870, when the 15th Amendment was ratified,
Black men now had the right to vote
in every state in the union for the first time.
And indeed, also to hold office.
♪ ♪
ABRAMS: What Reconstruction offered
was a fresh start for America.
You had this moment where
Black citizens enjoyed citizenship.
That was evidenced by Black men going to the U.S. Senate.
ANDERSON: You start having Black elected officials
in these amazingly high spaces
where you would not have imagined them
20 years earlier.
That was the power of Reconstruction,
and that was the power of the vote.
(quiet chatter)
MAN: Please welcome the first lady of our movement,
Mrs. Coretta Scott King.
(cheering and applause)
Hi. Welcome, all of you, my brothers and sisters,
to this 30th-anniversary March on Washington.
Dr. King’s spirit is with us.
ABRAMS: When I spoke at the March on Washington, I was 19.
I was terrified, and I do not recall to this day
actually giving that speech.
I’m delighted now to introduce
our next speaker, Stacey Abrams,
who is a junior at Spelman College in Atlanta.
She has helped mobilize students to be here today,
and we are very, very proud of our sister, Stacey Abrams.
-Stacey. -(applause)
ABRAMS: There was a guy with a clock
who told me, "You only have X amount of time to speak."
And I remember him saying, "Start."
Jobs, justice, peace.
This is a theme that we’ve been hearing today
over and over again.
This is a theme...
ABRAMS: When you walk onto the stage
and you look out over the Reflecting Pool,
I’d never seen that many people in one place in my entire life.
Today we come before you, walking on the road to jobs,
the road to peace, the road to justice.
ABRAMS: When I was in college,
I was very involved in voter registration.
What I was concerned about as a young person was
how many people weren’t taking advantage
of this right, of this power.
I set up voter registration opportunities,
and I would annoy my friends, and they did not care.
But I knew how important it was to have this right to vote,
because I’d remembered my parents teaching me about this.
I’d seen what it meant.
At Spelman, I used to go to city council meetings.
I was starting to understand how government worked,
but I was also becoming very aware of how it didn’t work.
I was protesting.
I burned the Georgia state flag
because it had a Confederate emblem on it.
We first tried to get a meeting with the governor
to talk about it, and when that wasn’t fruitful,
we decided to bring attention to it by setting it on fire.
Now, I got a burn permit for it,
so everyone knew I was doing it.
I’m like, "I don’t have to break the law
to make my point."
Stacey Yvonne Abrams, magna cum laude.
ABRAMS: I learned at Spelman College
I didn’t have to limit my goals
to what I’d seen other people do.
Today, I come to you as a young person,
as a young woman, as a young Black woman,
to ask you to use us.
Use the young people of the United States of America
to pave a road that will last forever.
(cheering and applause)
♪ ♪
WALDMAN: The first great protest march
on the nation’s capital ever
was for the right to vote for women.
In 1913, the day before the presidential inauguration,
5,000 women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue.
It took pushing and pushing and pushing.
It took hunger strikes,
picketing in front of the White House.
All these creative, nonviolent protests--
that was new to this country.
This was before Gandhi had done a lot of these things.
But the women’s movement and the fight for women’s suffrage
introduced them to the United States.
ANDERSON: We get to the 19th Amendment
that guarantees women the right to vote.
PEPPER: When you look back at how long
women fought for the right to vote...
We’re used to movements now--
ten or 20 years, and the change happens.
Women spent their entire lifetimes
fighting for the 19th Amendment.
ABRAMS: Black women were instrumental
in the passage of the 19th Amendment,
and they had been part of this conversation
from its beginning.
Women who were helping
shape opportunity for white women and for Black men,
and yet, in each of these conversations,
Black women were left out of the narrative.
And then, post-Reconstruction,
Black men, who had suddenly become part of the body politic,
were once again disenfranchised.
ARI BERMAN: The greatest moments of progress
are followed by the most intense periods
of retrenchment.
That’s what happened after the Civil War.
Reconstruction was a high point for voting rights,
and it was followed by nearly a hundred years of Jim Crow.
ANDREW YOUNG: The decision to remove
the troops from the South
was a decision made by one vote in the Congress.
One vote put an end to Reconstruction
and started the era of violence
and bloodshed and Klan-led catastrophes.
♪ ♪
ANDERSON: The South was trying to figure out,
"How do we stop all of these Black folk from voting?
If they continue to vote, we’re in trouble."
How do you say, "We don’t want Black folks to vote,"
without writing a law saying,
"We don’t want Black folks to vote"?
Mississippi said, "Oh, we’ve got this.
"We have figured out how to get around the 15th Amendment,
while systematically denying the vote to African Americans."
And that was the Mississippi Plan of 1890.
What Mississippi came up with was:
We are going to use the societally imposed conditions
on African Americans
and make those conditions the access to the ballot box.
What you say is: Democracy is expensive.
Elections are expensive.
And if you’re really invested,
you should be willing to pay a small fee.
A poll tax.
It’s not too much.
It sounds so reasonable.
But when you begin to think about what that means...
You can pay for food, or you can vote.
You can pay for some clothes for your children,
or you can vote.
And then the literacy test.
DEBO ADEGBILE: The literacy tests
are misnamed, in a sense,
because they weren’t really tests of one’s literacy.
They were traps.
They were designed to never let you
be able to answer them correctly.
PEPPER: I actually took out
one of the old literacy tests from Alabama.
My class of second- and third-year law students
could not pass the literacy test.
ABRAMS: There were literacy tests, poll taxes.
PEPPER: Grandfather clauses,
all-white primaries, property clauses.
ANDERSON: If this one doesn’t get you, this one will.
If this one doesn’t get you, this one will.
ABRAMS: There were this raft of different laws
that were called the Black Codes.
And those laws criminalized basic normal behavior.
It was a crime to be on a city street
without having a place to go.
It was a crime not to have a job
even if what you were doing was looking for work.
If you were caught loitering,
meaning you were waiting for your wife in a store,
that could be a pretext for arresting you,
incarcerating you
and permanently disenfranchising you.
ANDERSON: That felony disfranchisement
coming out of Florida in 1868--
what that does is it strips you of your right to vote.
It is a way to-to neutralize the 15th Amendment.
♪ ♪
PEPPER: Virtually overnight,
African Americans are eliminated
from the electorate in the South.
So, you go from having Black governors and senators
to having almost no-- if not any-- Black voters
that were able to participate in elections.
ANDERSON: In Mississippi, during Reconstruction,
African American voter registration was almost 67%.
By the time we have fought the Nazis
and we are moving into the Cold War
where the U.S. is really holding up
as the leader of the free world,
only three percent of age-eligible African Americans
were registered to vote in the South.
Three percent.
MAN: The word says, "Great is the Lord
and greatly to be praised."
♪ I’m gonna praise him, I got to get it out... ♪
♪ ♪
DESMOND MEADE: My name is Desmond Meade.
I grew up in Miami, Florida.
I am what we call a returning citizen.
(cheering)
Returning citizens are people
with previous felony convictions.
You know, I used to tell people that my story
didn’t have a happy ending because I lived in Florida,
where over 1.68 million people
had a lifetime ban from voting and other things.
MEADE: After graduating high school,
I went into the service.
When I returned home, I was addicted to drugs,
and I was in and out of jail,
and I ended up checking myself into drug treatment.
I experienced a transformation.
What have I done with my life, uh, to make a difference?
♪ ♪
NEWSMAN: Florida leads the nation
in denying the right to vote to one specific group: felons.
MEADE: For years, we have lobbied politicians
to change these old Jim Crow laws,
and we were not able to accomplish anything.
RICHARD HARRISON: If there’s a million and a half
convicted felons in Florida
and they’re suddenly all qualified to vote,
that universe of people are probably gonna be
more inclined to favor the Democratic Party.
What data is there to support that?
-None. -Mm.
So, if the politicians did not have
the political strength or courage
to actually change the policies,
then the next best thing was to let the citizens,
uh, take it into their own hands.
CROWD: Let my people vote! Let my people vote!
MEADE: In October of 2014,
we launched the ballot initiative.
All of the experts thought
that it was impossible to even get it on the ballot.
But this was an organic grassroots movement.
We knocked on a lot of doors.
-We’re gonna change the history. -All right.
MEADE: We made a ton of phone calls.
WOMAN: We’re talking to voters about Amendment 4,
the voting restoration amendment
on the ballot this November.
Have you heard about it?
And our message was very simple.
When the debt is paid, it’s paid.
Uh, and that this was an all-American issue
that impacted people from all walks of life.
I’m a 20-plus-year conservative Republican.
I bring that up not to make an issue of it
but to actually not make an issue of it.
This issue isn’t about politics.
It’s about people.
Out of all the civil rights,
nothing speaks more to citizenship
than being able to vote.
Today is midterm Election Day.
Voting’s gonna be in full swing here in just a few hours.
Voters in Florida are preparing to vote on a measure
that would restore voting rights
to 1.4 million people,
one in five African Americans in Florida
and ten percent of the state’s adult population.
NEWSWOMAN: Amendment 4, if it passes, is expected to
change the shape of Florida’s electorate for decades to come.
NEWSMAN: Millions of votes already cast here in Florida,
but millions more will vote today.
NEWSWOMAN: It looks like Amendment 4 will pass.
NEWSWOMAN: Amendment 4 passing by a wide margin.
64% there.
(cheering)
CROWD (chanting): Get the vote!
Get the vote! Get the vote!
I need every returning citizen here on this stage.
-WOMAN: That’s right. -(cheering)
MEADE: When Amendment 4 passed,
there was a feeling of joy and appreciation
for folks to be able to...
to participate in our democracy.
We did it!
Oh, my God, I am... I am feeling, like,
on cloud nine right now.
ABRAMS: That population in Florida
and around the country,
they are the legacy of the Black Codes.
They are the legacy of the Mississippi Plan.
They are the legacy of attempts
to permanently disenfranchise African Americans
and to block their participation in society.
♪ ♪
FONER: Birth of a Nation-- it’s based
on a novel called The Clansman,
which is a glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.
Why is the Ku Klux Klan glorified?
Because it saved the South from the horrors
of Black men holding office and, uh, being corrupt.
♪ ♪
ADEGBILE: You get to the early 1900s,
and you have the reign of terror from the Ku Klux Klan.
And what you see is almost a total purge
in lots of the former states of the Confederacy
of Black political participation...
...at the butt of a gun,
at the butt of threats of violence,
through lynching and chaos.
FONER: There was terrorist violence
on a massive scale in the South.
Between 1880 and 1950,
somewhere around 4,000 Americans are lynched--
and almost all of them African Americans.
ANDERSON: So, let me tell you a story about Maceo Snipes.
Maceo Snipes was a World War II veteran.
When you have fought fascists
and you have fought for democracy,
you want some of that democracy for yourself.
He came home to Georgia,
and Maceo was determined to vote.
There was an election going on,
and Eugene Talmadge was running for governor.
(cheering)
The federal government is working consistently
to tear down states’ rights.
And Talmadge was running on the platform
to, as he said, keep the Negroes where they belong.
And so Maceo goes down, and there’s a sign
that says something to the effect of:
"First Negro that votes,
that’ll be the last thing he ever does."
Maceo was like, "(scoffs) I fought fascists.
What you got?"
(laughs): And so Maceo went in there,
and he cast his ballot.
He was the only Black person in Taylor County, Georgia,
that voted in 1946.
Maceo goes home.
Nothing happens for a few days.
And then...
He goes to his door.
White man says, "Could you step out on the porch?"
Maceo’s like, "Sure."
And then he sees three additional white men.
And then he hears... (imitates guns cocking)
And it was a firing squad,
and they laid Maceo out.
The message was really clear.
You vote, you die.
Election Day terrorism was designed
to provide the kind of intimidation
that said, "If all of the pieces
"of the Mississippi Plan can’t stop you,
we’ve got some bullets and a rope that will."
And this is why you see the kind of insurgency
happening in the Black community
that leads into the civil rights movement.
This kind of... (sighs)
"I shall not be moved."
♪ Soon it will be done ♪
♪ Trouble of the world... ♪
MAN: My name is Roosevelt Lee.
I went out to Liberty to try to register,
and the next day, when I went back to my job,
the man fired me.
MAN: After being questioned, I was carried into a room
where a police officer came in and got a rope and said,
"Okay, nigger, get up in here and let’s go.
"We’re going to have a hanging here tonight,
and you’re going to be first."
♪ No more ♪
-(camera clicking) -(clamoring)
♪ Weepin’ and wailin’ ♪
♪ No more ♪
♪ Weepin’ and wailin’ ♪
♪ Going home ♪
♪ To live ♪
♪ With my Lord ♪
♪ Soon it will be done ♪
♪ Trouble of the world... ♪
ABRAMS: In my life, I never would’ve imagined
I would have the honor to stand here.
-(congregation murmuring) -And when I got the request,
my very next moment was to call my mom and my dad.
(congregation murmuring)
My parents, Reverend Robert Abrams
and Reverend Carolyn Abrams.
(cheering and applause)
You see, my father was arrested at the age of 14
in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
He was arrested for helping to register Black people to vote.
My mother was doing the same work.
She was just smart enough not to get caught, but...
(laughter, applause)
All of that started here in Selma.
♪ No more... ♪
WOMAN: Selma, Alabama, is located in Dallas County.
17,000 of the county’s residents are Negroes.
However, only 1.7% of these are registered voters.
The Negroes of Selma, Alabama, want to vote.
C.T. VIVIAN: We’re willing to be beaten for democracy,
and you misuse democracy in the street.
You beat people bloody in order that they will not
have the privilege to vote.
You can turn your back now,
and you can keep the club in your hand,
but you cannot beat down justice.
And we will register to vote
because, as citizens of these United States,
we have the right to do it.
You’re under arrest for contempt of court.
(quiet, indistinct chatter)
♪ ♪
YOUNG: Selma really awakened the nation.
In Selma, Sheriff Jim Clark
was refusing to let them register to vote.
They wouldn’t even pretend to go through the motions.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I want to start out
by commending you, the Negro citizens of Selma,
for standing up.
Sooner or later, Sheriff Clark will understand
that he’s dealing with a people that will not stop
until they have full freedom and human dignity.
NEWSMAN: Dr. King and a large number of Selma Negroes marched
through the city streets in small groups
to the county courthouse.
(siren wailing)
One woman, Mrs. Amelia Boynton,
was grabbed by the sheriff and hustled along the sidewalk
into the custody of deputies.
YOUNG: Dr. King and I, we had been working together
to get a civil rights bill passed.
We went back, and we met with President Johnson,
and he said, "Well, I know you need voting rights,
"but we just had a civil rights bill passed.
"I just don’t have the power
"to go back to Congress for another civil rights bill.
I know it’s needed, but, uh, I don’t have the power."
And he must have said, "I don’t have the power,"
half a dozen times.
When we left, I asked Dr. King, "Well, what are you gonna do?"
He said, "We’re gonna get the president some power."
Uh, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
has a statement.
We, the Negro citizens of Dallas County
and other Alabama Black Belt counties,
are marching today from Selma to Montgomery.
YOUNG: A couple of hundred people showed up.
John Lewis led the march.
LEWIS: We’re marching today to dramatize to the nation,
dramatize to the world
the hundreds and thousands of Negro citizens of Alabama,
but particularly here in the Black Belt area,
denied the right to vote.
ANDERSON: Then they get to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
It’s real quiet.
They’re like, "Where is everybody?"
♪ ♪
YOUNG: The Alabama state patrol and Sheriff Jim Clark
were on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
OFFICER: It’ll be detrimental to your safety
to continue this march, and I’m saying
that this is an unlawful assembly.
You are ordered to disperse.
Go home or go to your church.
This march will not continue.
You’ve got two minutes to turn around
and go back to your church.
Is that clear to you?
JOHN LEWIS: Major, may I have a word?
OFFICER: I’ve got nothing further to say to you.
Troopers here, advance toward the group.
See that they turn around and disperse.
(people screaming)
ANDERSON: You see people just stumbling.
You see them being trampled.
And the cameras are rolling.
-(weapon blasts) -(whistling, screaming)
YOUNG: That Sunday, everybody was watching
the movie Judgment at Nuremberg,
which was about Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews.
ANDERSON: They cut into their movie of the week
to show the footage of Bloody Sunday.
The nation was appalled because one of the ways
that Jim Crow worked so smoothly and so effectively
is that you didn’t have to see it.
But when you see the violence raining down on people
who are just fighting for the right to vote,
it tells you that something is systemically,
fundamentally wrong in this democracy.
It-it was just...
it was ruthless and brutal and...
and criminal.
But it was what...
It was what changed the South on voting rights.
(crowd clapping, chanting indistinctly)
WALDMAN: A nationwide movement
for voting rights erupted that week.
All over the country, there were protests,
there were sit-ins.
LUCI BAINES JOHNSON: My father saw it
as a pivotal moment to seize upon America’s angst
so that Americans would come and say,
"Yes, the cause is just. The time is now."
(applause)
♪ ♪
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Many of the issues of civil rights
are very complex and most difficult.
But about this, there can and should be no argument.
Every American citizen
must have an equal right to vote.
What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement
which reaches into every section
and state of America.
Because it’s not just Negroes,
but really, it’s all of us who must overcome
the crippling legacy of bigotry
and injustice.
And we shall overcome.
(applause)
YOUNG: He ended his speech with:
"And we shall overcome."
That’s the only time I saw Martin Luther King,
uh, shed a tear.
We gave him the power.
All of us working together
got the Voting Rights Act passed.
ABRAMS: Lyndon Johnson understood that,
while he had been an impediment to civil rights for decades,
the time had changed and it was time for him to change.
But more importantly, he understood that if
the power of the right to vote was truly made available,
it would change the future of this nation.
♪ ♪
I’m the product of the Voting Rights Act.
(congregation murmuring in agreement)
An act that was bought and paid for
-on Edmund Pettus Bridge. -(murmuring, clapping)
With foot soldiers who believed
that they had the right to be there.
Because when you stood up and went across that bridge,
those were the wings of the eagles
-that Isaiah talked about. -WOMAN: Yes.
It may have looked like feet marching across the bridge,
but that was flight.
BERMAN: Days after the Voting Rights Act was passed,
there were federal officials in the South
registering African Americans to vote for the first time
in counties where Black people
hadn’t been able to register for decades.
This was truly revolutionary.
ANDERSON: By 1967, two years after the Voting Rights Act,
almost 60% of Black adults in Mississippi
registered to vote.
Game changer.
ABRAMS: September of 2018,
I went home to visit my grandmother.
♪ ♪
And Grandma had a recliner that sat right next to her bed.
When you go to visit my grandma, you sat down
because you did not want to interrupt
whatever it was she was watching.
And so, I sat on the bedside waiting for her attention,
and, uh, she turned to me.
And unprompted, my grandmother reached for my hand,
and she started telling me about the first time she voted.
It was three years after
the adoption of the Voting Rights Act.
But it was the first time for most African Americans
that they really would have a chance
to participate in an election.
And this was during a time
where you put on your Sunday best
and you would make an event out of going to vote.
My grandfather called for her from the front room.
Her name was Wilter.
And he’s like, "Wilter, come on!"
She didn’t respond.
Her nickname was Bill.
And so then he yelled out, "Bill, it’s time to go."
And my grandmother said... she still didn’t say anything.
So he came back to find out why she hadn’t responded.
And she was frozen. She was afraid to go.
I remember her squeezing my hand
and the feel of that paper-thin skin
and the fragile bones
but this grip that she had on my hand
where she said that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to vote;
she was afraid of it.
(clamoring)
She was afraid of the billy clubs
and the hoses and the dogs, and she did not believe
that this time would be any different.
She didn’t believe that the power of democracy
was finally hers.
And my grandfather told her that she had to get up,
that her children had been in trouble
trying to guarantee this right
and that she owed it to them, if not to herself,
to get up and vote.
And she said she was still terrified,
she was still deeply afraid of this moment,
but she was also ashamed of herself.
She was ashamed that she didn’t want to reach for this power.
She got up, she finished getting dressed,
and they went to vote.
And as squeezed my hand, she said, "But, Stacey,
I’ve never missed another election."
PAUL B. JOHNSON JR.: Mississippi and the other
Southern states are engaged in a life-and-death fight
with the federal government.
What is this fight all about?
The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Insofar as the Negro is concerned,
it will suspend all literacy requirements
of the Mississippi law.
Georgia has no problem
with reference to voter registration.
We do not need federal registrars in this state.
I am unalterably opposed and will fight to the end
any attempts to reshape or mold our state
to conform to the prescription written
by dictatorial left-wing integrationist social planners
daydreaming on the bank of the Potomac.
BERMAN: The Southern states challenged
the Voting Rights Act immediately
in the courts as unconstitutional.
But they fail.
The Supreme Court upholds the law eight-to-one.
♪ ♪
ADEGBILE: If you frame the argument,
"Who doesn’t believe that people
should be allowed to vote?"
while there will be some people that will raise their hand,
most Americans believe
that citizens should be allowed to vote.
(applause)
GERALD FORD: The bill that I will sign today
extends the temporary provisions of the act
for seven more years and broadens the provisions
to bar discrimination against Spanish-speaking Americans,
American Indians, Alaskan Natives
-and Asian Americans. -(applause)
ABRAMS: The Voting Rights Act began
with the former Confederate states,
but this was a law that understood
that discrimination could crop up anywhere.
The state of Arizona was such a bad actor
that in 1975 the U.S. Justice Department
added Arizona to the process because of their long history
of discrimination against Latinos and Native Americans.
(indistinct chanting)
BERMAN: Hispanics were facing some of the same kind of things
in Arizona, in Texas, across the Southwest,
that African Americans faced in the segregated South.
Things like literacy tests, voter intimidation.
They said, "We need protection
in the Voting Rights Act as well."
Maricopa County is the largest
and most important county in Arizona.
From 1960 to 1964,
William Rehnquist was in charge of ballot security operations
for the Republican Party of Maricopa County.
This was called Operation Eagle Eye.
And what Rehnquist and others did
was they went to Democratic parts of Phoenix
and they asked Latino and African American voters
if they could read the Constitution.
So, this was a de facto literacy test.
And if people could not read it
to the satisfaction of Rehnquist and others,
Rehnquist challenged their eligibility to vote.
William Rehnquist, the future
chief justice of the Supreme Court,
was on the front lines of voter suppression
in Maricopa County, Arizona, all the way back in the 1960s.
NEWSWOMAN: America’s most unwelcoming prison regime
likes to advertise it always has vacancies.
JOE ARPAIO: It shows I will always have room for illegals.
NEWSWOMAN: The man who calls himself
America’s toughest sheriff
makes his prison as unpleasant as possible.
ALEJANDRA GOMEZ: Arpaio became
the face of terror for our community.
We would see posses going to neighborhoods
to do roundups.
There were checkpoints to ask people for their papers.
It created a righteous anger, saying that we deserve more
and we do not deserve to live under this.
MAN (chanting): We gotta tell the whole world!
GROUP: This is ACE territory!
I said, my people!
GROUP: Yeah!
-We got a story! -Yeah!
We gotta tell the whole world!
This is ACE territory!
All right. How’s everybody doing?
-GROUP: Good. -Good?
How’s everybody doing, y’all?
-(louder): Good. -All right, dope.
About almost three years ago, it was my first day at LUCHA.
And Stephanie was up here at the front,
and she was talking about
how we’re gonna register a lot of people to vote.
And I remember her giving me the clipboard, right?
And she was like, "All right, we’re gonna go to Walmart."
-And I was so scared. -(laughter)
♪ I’m still hopin’ for the tours wide open... ♪
GOMEZ: Our volunteers are standing on the shoulders
of folks that have paved the way for us to be able
to cast that ballot and become part of
a power community that is now impacting policies.
Hi.
Are you a registered voter?
No? How come?
Are you a citizen?
Hola.
(speaking Spanish)
GOMEZ: There is always a debate on:
Why aren’t our communities participating?
-I’m already registered. -Oh, you are? What about y’all?
No, I’m not.
No? How come?
I don’t know. I don’t...
I don’t trust poli... politicians.
No, you’re right.
And so it’s like, I’m out here doing my thing.
No, heck yeah. I feel like...
I-I mean, that’s how I thought, too, right?
GOMEZ: The most important part of voter registration
is that human connection
and being able to understand why that person
does not trust.
(siren wailing)
Intimidation from the government is real.
It is powerful.
And it is because of the changing demographics
in the nation.
It is the fear of what this larger vote can mean.
(cheering and applause)
("Beautiful Day" by U2 playing)
♪ It’s a beautiful day ♪
♪ Don’t let it get away ♪
♪ Beautiful day ♪
♪ Touch me... ♪
If there is anyone out there
who still doubts that America is a place
where all things are possible,
who still wonders
if the dream of our founders is alive in our time,
who still questions the power of our democracy,
tonight is your answer.
(cheering)
(fanfare playing)
BERMAN: Opponents of the Voting Rights Act
seized on Barack Obama’s election
as a reason why the Voting Rights Act
was no longer necessary.
At the very moment that you see the ultimate progress,
you see conservatives embracing that progress
as a reason to try to get rid of the law
that made Obama’s election possible.
ANDERSON: Barack Obama scared the bejeebers out of them.
He brought 15 million new voters to the polls.
(crowd cheering)
This is what we should be celebrating:
bringing 15 million new people
into this incredible civic society,
engaged in this democracy,
believing that they have a stake in this democracy
and getting out to vote.
Instead, that Obama coalition
becomes the hit list for voter suppression.
How do we stop African Americans,
Hispanics, Asian Americans,
the young and the poor from voting?
The Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder,
allowed that to happen.
♪ ♪
BERMAN: Shelby County, Alabama--
there was an election there
in which the districts were redrawn...
...so that the only African American
city council member lost his race.
Voter suppression and gerrymandering
are two sides of the same coin:
efforts by politicians in power
to try to manipulate the process
to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
Gerrymandering is a real problem.
It’s the practice of drawing voting districts
in a way that creates unfair advantages
for whoever happens to be drawing the lines.
A.E. DICK HOWARD: In the age of computers,
you can gerrymander with scientific precision.
You can run in and out of alleys
and up and down streets
and carefully include and exclude whichever voters
you want in one district and not in another.
Shouldn’t all of this be illegal?
Well, that’s complicated.
Because if you are gerrymandering
to disadvantage minorities,
yes, that is illegal under the Voting Rights Act,
but if you are gerrymandering to disadvantage
voters of an opposing party,
that has generally been allowed.
ANDERSON: Shelby County willfully violated federal law.
They didn’t bother to go up to the Department of Justice
to check on whether it was okay
as they were changing the voting boundaries
as the Voting Rights Act required.
When they got called on it, when they got sued,
they said, "We didn’t do anything wrong.
The era of racism is over."
♪ ♪
ERIC HOLDER: What had been bipartisan before
became extremely partisan after the election of Barack Obama.
You know, people tend to forget that Republicans supported it.
Every reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act
was signed by a Republican president.
I think that democracy, if it’s to work,
then everybody that’s eligible to be a voter
should be registered, and they should vote.
I am proud to sign the Voting Rights Act
Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006.
ADEGBILE: Ronald Reagan called it
the crown jewel of American democracy,
but with every subsequent reauthorization,
there’s a legal challenge brought.
KRISTEN CLARKE: It’s a seemingly coordinated strategy
that we have seen waged by opponents
to rip out the heart of the Voting Rights Act.
It was almost a strategy of,
"Let’s throw spaghetti against the wall
and see which one sticks."
The Shelby County case is the one
that survived the lower courts
and winded its way up to the Supreme Court.
NEWSMAN: The Supreme Court hears a challenge
to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Its detractors say
the Voting Rights Act is out of date.
Its defenders consider it a needed bulwark for justice.
SCOTT PELLEY: The Voting Rights Act requires nine states
to get federal approval of changes to their election laws.
BERT REIN: From a lawyer’s point of view,
this is a valid legal case and it could be honorably argued.
And that’s the business we’re in, so we took the case.
JOHN ROBERTS: We’ll hear argument first
this morning in case Shelby County v. Holder.
Mr. Rein?
REIN: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court...
We argued that the Voting Rights Act
was probably one of the deepest intrusions
of the federal government into areas
that states traditionally administered.
Think that that really doesn’t mask the need
for equal treatment of the sovereign states.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR: I’m gonna have a hard time with that.
You can’t treat states the same,
because their problems are different,
their populations are different,
their needs are different.
Everything’s different.
ANTONIN SCALIA: All of the noncovered states
are worse in that regard than the nine covered states.
-Is that correct? -ADEGBILE: J-Justice Scalia...
SCALIA: Every-every one of them is worse?
ADEGBILE: Justice Scalia, it’s-it’s a fair question.
-It... -SCALIA: Not just a fair one.
It’s the crucial question.
ADEGBILE: The South has changed and made progress,
but some things remain stubbornly the same,
and the trained effort
to deny African American voters the franchise
is part of Alabama’s history to this very day.
ROBERTS: Have there been episodes-- egregious episodes--
of the kind you’re talking about
in states that are not covered?
ADEGBILE: Absolutely, Chief Justice Roberts.
ROBERTS: Well, then it doesn’t seem to help you make the point
that the differential treatment continues to be justified.
BERMAN: John Roberts had it out for the Voting Rights Act
as far back as 1982.
Early in his political career, it was John Roberts’s job
to try to prevent the Congress
from reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act.
ANDERSON: John Roberts,
his mentor was William Rehnquist.
This is why this lineage is so important.
Because he hated the Voting Rights Act.
ADEGBILE: I knew that this was an important act.
I knew that it was doing important work,
and I knew that it would be a disaster
for the court to strike it down.
A controversial ruling today by the Supreme Court.
GWEN IFILL: Five-to-four, the U.S. Supreme Court
took the teeth out of a law enacted nearly 50 years ago.
It invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act.
NEWSWOMAN: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
joined by the three other liberal justices, said...
I am deeply disappointed... deeply disappointed
with the court’s decision in this matter.
This decision represents
a serious setback for voting rights
and has the potential to negatively affect
millions of Americans across the country.
I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say--
I was pissed off by what the, uh...
by what the court did.
-Thank you. -It really struck home
that this was a political decision
that the court was making.
Justice Ginsburg was correct.
If you have an umbrella
that keeps you dry in the middle of a thunderstorm,
the fact that you are dry doesn’t mean
that you don’t need the umbrella.
ABRAMS: Every single one of those states
that was covered previously by the Voting Rights Act was told,
"Never mind. We think you’re good now. Go forth."
The floodgates literally opened in 2013
when the Supreme Court issued its ruling.
The ink on Tuesday’s ruling wasn’t even dry
when Texas’s Republican attorney general declared
that his state’s controversial voter I.D. law
will take effect, quote, "immediately."
WALDMAN: Just hours after the decision came down,
states began to implement voter suppression laws
all across the country.
ANDERSON: Texas took the lead on this one.
It spread like wildfire.
So, you’re seeing them in Pennsylvania.
You’re seeing them in Kansas.
You’re seeing them in Wisconsin.
You’re seeing them in Ohio.
NEWSWOMAN: Nine more states are enforcing new laws
requiring eligible voters to present a government-issued
photo I.D. at the polls.
HANS VON SPAKOVSKY: Overwhelming majority
of Americans, regardless of their political views
and regardless of their race or ethnicity,
support voter I.D. laws.
This is not Jim Crow.
This is not a police dog.
This is not a fire hose.
When you restrict access to the right to vote
by creating a narrow set of I.D.’s that can be used,
it’s creating blocks to people being able to participate.
They try to make it seem rational
and facially neutral, racially neutral, but it’s not.
We had voters who were born in the Jim Crow South
who had no birth certificates
because white hospitals would not allow them
to give birth in their facilities.
I had my Social Security card, my To Go Pass.
I had my UnitedHealthcare.
I had my red, white and blue card.
And I had my Ford card.
And that still wasn’t enough to vote.
About 21 million Americans don’t have strict forms
of government-issued I.D.
That works out to about ten percent of the electorate.
HOLDER: You know, you look at Texas.
If you have a state-issued photo I.D.
that says you’re allowed to carry a concealed weapon,
that’s sufficient to allow you to vote.
If, however, you have a state-issued photo I.D.
that says you’re a student at the University of Texas,
that’s insufficient.
MICHAEL PARSONS: Young people in America,
they could have the most power
of any electoral bloc in the country.
If you take out one or two campuses,
you can swing an election.
So, that’s exactly what New Hampshire Republicans
decided to do.
ALLEN: Studies will show that if you can get young adults
to vote between the ages of 18 and 24,
they’re more likely to vote
going further into their adulthood.
Once you strip someone their access of being able to vote,
it takes away their role within our democracy.
ABRAMS: Voter suppression has often targeted communities
that are seen as nonnormative.
And we saw this come into sharp relief in North Dakota,
where a law that required a residential address
on driver’s licenses seemed benign.
But the reality was that, for those communities,
getting a residential address on a reservation
required that the state or local government
grant that to you, and it didn’t happen.
♪ ♪
A majority of Indian country
does not have physical addresses.
They use post office boxes.
It became very evident that the law was created
to suppress the Native American vote.
BARB SEMANS: The only way to get recognition is to vote.
And that’s what it is-- a matter of survival.
BERMAN: In Wisconsin, they put a new voter I.D. law in effect
in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Lot of Republicans, since 1984, in the presidential races,
have not been able to win in Wisconsin.
Why would it be any different for a Ted Cruz
or a Donald Trump?
Well, I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate
the Democrats have ever put up, and now we have photo I.D.,
and I think photo I.D. is gonna make
a little bit of a difference as well.
BERMAN: Up to 23,000 people
were blocked or deterred from voting,
and Donald Trump only won the state of Wisconsin
by just over 22,000 votes.
So, this one restriction in Wisconsin alone
had a huge impact on Donald Trump
becoming the next president of the United States.
PEPPER: Ohio has become, sadly, the leader in creating
certain types of-of voter suppression
that other states have followed.
And there’s no bigger example of that than purging.
There is certainly need to update your voting rolls.
People pass away. People move.
There also are some states that are really smart about this.
Things like automatic voter registration.
But Ohio does the exact opposite.
Ohio’s had a purging process
where, if you don’t vote in several elections
and you don’t respond to a postcard,
you’re knocked off the rolls.
NEWSMAN: When it comes to the right to vote,
Ohio is a "use it or lose it" state.
In a split five-to-four decision,
the Supreme Court ruled that in Ohio
you can be dropped from the voter rolls
if you do not vote for about six years
and do not respond to a card
the state sends you in the mail.
MARCIA FUDGE: They send you a postcard to your house.
It really does look like a piece of junk mail.
If you don’t send it back, they assume you’re not there.
Then they purge you from the roll.
They say, "Oh, this person didn’t send it back.
We’re gonna drop them."
They’re not notified that they have been purged,
and that-that’s a problem.
PEPPER: In a state of less than 12 million,
two million have been purged.
A lot of people are on that list
’cause they move every year; they’re poor.
They’re going from one place to the next to the next.
But also, it turns out
there are thousands and thousands
of people on this list who had voted recently,
who were not supposed to be on the purge list.
20% of those people were on in error-- government error.
ABRAMS: And in the United States,
the right to vote is the only right you can lose
for not using it.
You can decide not to go hunting on a Saturday,
and you don’t lose your 2nd Amendment rights.
But in nine states, it is the law of the land
that you can lose your right to vote
simply for not using it.
After the Shelby decision,
we saw over 1,600 precincts close in the states
that were once covered by the Voting Rights Act.
And when you shut down a polling place
where someone can go a mile to vote,
and suddenly they have to go ten miles
and they don’t have a car, they will not vote.
Under Brian Kemp, 214 polling places
shut down in the state of Georgia.
He used the gutting of the Voting Rights Act
almost immediately.
ANDERSON: Jim Crow 2.0.
That’s what we’re seeing.
When you look at Georgia in 2018,
it is the rise of Jim Crow again.
ABRAMS: The Shelby decision,
what it did was give carte blanche
to states like Georgia
to restore every racist trope they had.
Had I run for governor in 2012,
it would have empirically been an easier election.
♪ ♪
By the time I was running for governor,
I had had eight years of watching
the Secretary of State Brian Kemp
build a national reputation for voter suppression.
We anticipated that voter suppression
was part of Brian Kemp’s behavior.
What we couldn’t anticipate was that
I was going to be in a fight
with the very person who controlled the system.
(news theme plays)
I got a big truck
just in case I need to round up criminal illegals
and take ’em home myself.
-(engine revs) -Yep, I just said that.
NEWSMAN: Yeah, he just said that,
and he’s joining us now, the candidate who calls himself
"a politically incorrect conservative,"
current Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
Good morning, sir.
Morning, guys. Great to be on with you.
ABRAMS: Brian Kemp had the ability to not only be
the candidate in the race,
but he was also running the election.
He was the constitutionally authorized election supervisor.
That would have been illegal in virtually every other
advanced democracy in the entire world.
We sued Brian Kemp multiple times
over his efforts to lock people out of the ballot box.
One of his most nefarious schemes
was called "exact match."
NEWSWOMAN: More than 53,000 Georgia residents
have had their registrations put on hold
thanks to a policy that requires their applications
to precisely match information from other state agencies.
Georgia’s population is approximately 32% Black,
but the list of voter registrations on hold
is nearly 70% Black.
(audience laughing)
Well, well, well.
My old friend racism.
I’ve been expecting you.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit
because absentee ballots were being rejected
because the signature on the absentee ballot
purportedly did not match the signature that was on file.
The problem is signatures change.
It’s one of the worst metrics to use.
A lot of people for whom English
was not their first language
will have an inconsistent signature
because they have to write and sign their American name.
Asian voters, when they immigrated here,
they adopted an American name.
My grandmother had an American signature,
and she has not been able to sign that name consistently.
The argument for many of these voter suppression laws
is this very fallacious argument
that it’s necessary to stop voter fraud.
The voter fraud is real. It must be stopped.
We need every tool to go after it.
Voter I.D. laws stop voter fraud.
I’ve dedicated my career to fighting voter fraud
by doing things like having photo I.D.
Every time voter fraud occurs, it cancels out the vote
of a lawful citizen and undermines democracy.
We can’t let that happen.
When Donald Trump lost the popular vote,
he lost it by 2.9 million votes,
and he said three million people voted illegally.
And there was no evidence to back this up,
but this was a dramatic assertion
of voter fraud on a really unprecedented scale.
Trump employed this rhetoric to create his own,
quote, unquote, "Commission on Election Integrity."
There was really an all-star cast of some of the biggest
vote suppressors in the Republican Party today.
People like Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation
that had built the case for voter I.D. laws
and similar restrictions on voting.
VON SPAKOVSKY: The president’s Advisory Commission
wanted to get the voter registration list
from all the states so they could start doing comparisons
and find people who were still on the list
who were deceased, to find individuals
who were, uh, voting in more than one state.
Yesterday, the vice chair of that commission
sent a letter to all 50 states, asking for voter data
that includes addresses, party I.D.,
voter history and Social Security information.
This was like a Big Brother data request.
There was no evidence that the administration would insure
the privacy and security of this data.
And moreover, why did they need to know party affiliation?
Many states resisted that.
They refused to provide that data.
NANCY CORDES: Opposition to this is bipartisan,
to some degree.
Mississippi’s Secretary of State,
a Republican, has called it a violation of voters’ privacy
and said that the commission can, quote,
"go jump in the Gulf of Mexico."
BERMAN: The Commission on Election Integrity
that Donald Trump formed
was a complete and utter disaster.
It disbanded without issuing any findings,
and it found no evidence of voter fraud
during its entire investigative process.
We have a database at the Heritage Foundation
that we’re constantly adding to.
It has a sampling of proven voter fraud cases,
uh, from across the country.
Um, it’s got almost 1,300 cases in it.
Here’s what they truly found,
and let’s put it up again for people.
146 million total registered voters.
Out of those, there were 2,068 alleged voter fraud cases.
Okay? So it does happen,
but it doesn’t happen on a national scale...
Doesn’t affect the outcome.
...that would affect the outcome.
So, then you ask yourself,
why do we have this architecture
of all of these obstacles?
Voter I.D., gerrymandering,
purging, poll closures.
Why do we have all of this
if voter fraud is virtually nonexistent?
When you ask that question that way,
then it leads you down a path
where America must look at itself again
the way that it looked at itself
when it saw the cataclysm on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
♪ ♪
ABRAMS: Running for governor
was about changing what it meant
to be a leader in Georgia.
And there’s nothing more transformative
in the Deep South than a Black woman from poverty
having opportunity.
It hadn’t been done before, so I thought
I would take advantage of the freedom
to try the things no one else tried.
We know that voter turnout
is the best remedy to voter suppression.
We decided to go after everyone who could vote.
WOMAN: Y’all already been out to vote?
We need everybody out there in droves.
I’ll make sure they vote.
Matter of fact, they ain’t gonna
work tomorrow if they don’t vote.
-Ooh, give me some! -There you go.
That’s what you got to do.
-You got to put it out there like that. -That’s right.
I’ve been out here talking to people who are...
"Yeah, I’ve never voted before."
"Oh, I’ve never had someone come to my door before."
Too often, politicians only go to the people they know,
and they only engage the people they can rely on.
But go out there, man. We’re trying to make history.
-You know what I’m saying? -Yeah, I’m gonna vote.
All right, that’s what I want to hear.
ABRAMS: Which means you don’t adapt
to the changing needs of community.
Thank you so much for your time.
PIVEN: Among democratic countries,
the United States stands out
for having very low voter turnout.
Politicians produced the system
because elections are easier to manage
if the electorate is smaller.
(cheering and applause)
Hello, Georgia!
I was asking everybody, "You know Stacey Abrams?
-"You know Stacey Abrams? -(laughter)
You know Stacey Abrams?"
Finally, somebody said, "I know Stacey Abrams."
And they said, "I have her cell number."
I go, "Give it to me."
(laughter)
"I will call her up right now."
So I called Stacey Abrams, and I said,
"Stacey, this is Oprah."
(laughter, cheering)
You know what she said?
She said, "Girl, let me pull over to the side of the road."
(laughter, applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, Stacey Abrams!
(cheering)
CROWD (chanting): Stacey! Stacey! Stacey!
My name is Stacey Abrams, and I am running to be
the next governor of the great state of Georgia.
(cheering)
ABRAMS: We talked to people.
We met them at their doors.
We met them at their churches, their mosques,
their temples, their shrines, their synagogues.
I went to Dragon Con and ONE Musicfest.
I also talked about real issues.
I talked about my brother and his fight
with drug addiction and incarceration.
There are thousands of Walters
throughout the state of Georgia...
-CROWD: Yeah! -...who only get
the help they need when they go to prison.
-Yeah! -I’m running for governor
because I don’t believe Georgia’s
just a state of retribution.
I want to see a state of redemption!
CROWD: Yeah!
ABRAMS: Let’s get it done!
(chanting): Let’s get it done! Let’s get it done!
But I also had solutions, and I talked about the things
that people care about every single day.
Georgia, we need you to show up and show out.
(women speaking foreign languages)
-...Stacey Abrams... -...Stacey Abrams...
We wanted everybody who could vote to vote
and to vote for me.
(cheering)
LEWIS: It is in our hands
to make Stacey Abrams the next governor
of the state of Georgia!
And give it up for your next governor,
Stacey Abrams.
-(cheering) -CROWD: Stacey! Stacey!
Stacey! Stacey! Stacey! Stacey!
Thank you, Georgia.
One of our missions in our campaign
was to focus attention on early voting.
And so, by way of example, I went to vote early.
I came to my precinct armed with my I.D.,
ready to cast my ballot.
I also had a bunch of television cameras with me
because we wanted to publicize how important this was.
(crowd cheering)
I hand my information over, and the young woman,
with great trepidation, tells me that I cannot vote
because I’ve applied for an absentee ballot.
And I lean in quietly, and I say, "No, I didn’t."
I’ve voted in the state of Georgia since 1992.
I’ve never applied for an absentee ballot.
She desperately wants to be helpful,
but something had happened,
and she did not have good information.
Her manager came over, we talked,
and we were able to figure out what needed to be done.
(indistinct chatter)
-(cheering) -What worries me
are the thousands of people in Georgia who tried to vote
that didn’t have CNN and MSNBC standing over their shoulders
who were told no and who believed that no was the answer
because they didn’t have the authority
or the knowledge to demand better.
We really knew by the last week of early vote
that we were seeing extraordinary turnout,
um, beyond our projections,
and we also knew that we were seeing an extraordinary
inability of the election system
to process the folks.
It was the very big warning bell that
Election Day was gonna be a problem.
(quiet chatter, laughter)
NEWSMAN: We were with Brian Kemp and his family
as they showed up to vote.
It said this was an invalid card.
-Okay. You go back in there. I’ll redo it for you. -Yeah.
NEWSMAN: And Kemp had some voting issues.
His voter card said "invalid."
(cameras clicking)
You just went and cast your ballot there.
-Yeah. -During your tenure as Secretary of State here,
you’ve made it harder for
tens of thousands of people in Georgia...
I would disagree with that question completely.
...to cast their ballots across the state.
Because you have no factual basis
on making it harder for people to vote.
It has never been easier for people to vote in the...
in the state of Georgia than it is right now.
NEWSMAN: One of the races
that we’ve been watching really closely
is the governor’s race in the state of Georgia.
NEWSMAN: From Midtown to Marietta,
we’re seeing long lines at polling places across the area.
This morning, we got here at-- when the polls opened at 7:00.
We were told that the machines weren’t working.
Finally, at 11:00, they got machines that were working,
so we’ve been in line for five hours.
NEWSMAN: How long have you waited
-in line here this morning? -About three and a half hours.
-You gonna go home? Come back? -I’m-I’m hurting.
I-I’ll be back. I got to go take some medicine.
These lines are insane.
We had a big fucking problem.
Um, people are leaving lines all over.
I’m getting the reports.
WOMAN: My parents are U.S. citizens.
They’ve voted in the past, but today,
when they showed up to vote, they were told
that they were purged from the voter rolls.
ABRAMS: We’d received thousands of calls
to our Voter Protection Hotline.
Conversations about people
being turned away from the polls.
I can’t find this one.
-This is where you would normally vote? -Yes.
The name didn’t come up, in your case.
It didn’t come up even when I search.
Those stories were coming to me at every moment.
NEWSWOMAN: Some were here for three hours,
others here for much longer,
after the Express poll machines stopped working
inside the Annistown Elementary polling place Tuesday morning.
LAUREN GROH-WARGO: We knew who we were up against.
We had been fighting this guy for years.
And then to see what the result was of
intentional underfunding of elections,
intentional non-training of local elections officials.
NEWSWOMAN: He says he went
to cast his ballot Tuesday morning,
he handed the poll worker his I.D., and then she...
Says, "Mr. Whitten, wait. Stop. You’ve already voted."
I said, "No, I-I think I would’ve remembered that."
She says, "No, I see here that you voted,
and, uh, it looks like several days ago."
Intentional purges, intentional precinct consolidation.
They combined two locations, gave us three machines.
Last election, I had 12. I don’t know why.
Intentional lack of training
around absentee and provisional ballots.
All the compendium coming together.
MAN: Students were showing up, and their names were not
on the actual roll.
Um, and so they were casting provisional ballots,
so much so that they actually ran out of provisional ballots.
GROH-WARGO: It was just out of control.
ABRAMS: We knew people were trying to be heard,
but I also knew they weren’t being listened to.
♪ ♪
Election night...
I knew something had gone horribly wrong.
NEWSMAN: Take a look at where the numbers stand right now.
As you can see, the numbers are now tightening.
The spread is only some 60,000.
NEWSWOMAN: Several counties have yet to process
their provisional and emergency ballots,
leaving an estimated 22,000 ballots outstanding.
ABRAMS: By 1:00 a.m., what we knew
was that the race was too close to call.
(crowd cheering)
I’m here tonight to tell you votes remain to be counted.
There are voices that were waiting to be heard.
Across our state, folks are opening up
the dreams of voters in absentee ballots,
and we believe our chance for a stronger Georgia
is just within reach.
(cheering, murmuring)
But we cannot seize it until all voices are heard.
And I promise you tonight, we are gonna make sure
-that every vote is counted. -(cheering)
Every single vote.
♪ ♪
ALLEGRA LAWRENCE-HARDY: We’ve heard from
40,000 Georgians and counting
who have told us story after story
about the concerns and problems they have,
uh, with our system across Georgia.
GROH-WARGO: Our staff was,
you know, running around the state
and collecting all of these stories,
and we’re in the federal courts
fighting for each of these votes.
ABRAMS: Every day, there were votes that were found,
and there were lawsuits that were settled
that then added to the total.
GROH-WARGO: And it was just a devastating,
obvious thing what happened.
You couldn’t swing a bat
and not hit 14 people who had problems voting.
NEWSMAN: Governor Nathan Deal rolled out
the gubernatorial red carpet Thursday for Brian Kemp,
declaring him governor-elect, though the state
has yet officially to certify the election.
Even if she got 100% of those votes,
we still win with, um, a 50%-plus-one-vote majority.
Actually, it’s much more than that.
Uh, so we’re moving forward with the transition.
Brian Kemp is
25,622 votes
above the threshold for a runoff election.
25,000 votes
of nearly four million cast
are at issue in this race.
By his own admission,
there are at least 25,000 outstanding votes
and hundreds, if not thousands, of more
that we are learning about and discovering every day.
Georgians deserve to have their votes counted.
NEWSMAN: And some Abrams supporters protested peacefully
outside the governor’s office during Kemp’s news conference,
believing there are enough
uncounted votes to force a runoff.
They’re arresting me because I refused
to leave the rotunda of the capitol...
NIKEMA WILLIAMS: Well, I was taken out
in handcuffs and jailed
because I stood with my constituents
to voice their concerns
and make sure that every vote is counted.
By the end, we were still 17,000 votes shy of the runoff.
NEWSWOMAN: The ballot battle
in Georgia’s governor’s race is over.
NEWSMAN: Brian Kemp will be certified the winner.
(crowd cheering)
I was very angry.
I’m still very angry.
Um...
...very angry.
Make no mistake.
The former Secretary of State
was deliberate and intentional in his actions.
Pundits and hyper-partisans will hear my words
as a rejection of the normal order.
You see, I’m supposed to say nice things and accept my fate.
They will complain that I should not use this moment
to recap what was done wrong or to demand a remedy.
You see, as a leader, I should be stoic in my outrage
and silent in my rebuke.
But stoicism is a luxury,
and silence is a weapon
for those who would quiet the voices of the people.
And I will not concede,
because the erosion of our democracy is not right.
(crowd cheering)
KEMP: Last night, as you all know,
my opponent ended her campaign.
The election is over,
and I’m honored to be Georgia’s governor-elect.
My responsibility as the daughter
of Robert and Carolyn Abrams,
as the granddaughter of people
who had been denied the right to vote,
as the great-great- granddaughter of slaves,
my job was to use this election
to talk about the system that let this be.
And so, we decided on that night
that we were going to demand
that the system itself be fixed.
Because, when you concede, what you’re saying
is that the system worked the way it was supposed to.
And I refuse to believe that a system
that is supposed to protect our democracy
worked the way it was supposed to.
♪ ♪
In 2020 and beyond,
the way we fight voter suppression
is by meeting it where it is.
That means, first and foremost,
volunteer to help people get registered to vote.
Hi, Nina, darling. My name is Stacey Abrams.
I wanted to thank you for all the work you’re doing
to reach out to voters
and making sure they stay on the rolls.
ANDERSON: If you believe in "one person, one vote,"
if you believe in representative government,
then you will fight for this democracy.
So, if you, um, fill it out right now,
-we can mail it out for you. -(indistinct chatter)
MEADE: Our power is in our vote.
Our power is in our voice.
And if we willingly choose to remain silent,
we give up that power.
WOMAN: The day that we celebrate
what it means to be an American.
Today, our returning citizens
have their right to vote restored.
(cheering and applause)
SEAN J. YOUNG: Plan out what you’re going to do
to make sure your ballot is cast and counted,
and then ask your friends and family
whether they have a plan.
Even if you’ve done everything right,
do not assume you’re registered.
Check to make sure that you haven’t been purged
or that your polling place has moved.
Vote as early as possible.
Take your friends with you to the polls.
Talk to your neighbors about voting.
Call your parents and ask them if they’ve voted.
Call your grandparents.
And make sure that people know what precinct they’re in,
where their polling location is.
And then you turn up at the polls,
and you don’t leave until you cast your ballot.
They told voters to anticipate long lines.
Is two and a half hours, three hours, four hours--
is that reasonable, though, in your mind, David?
It’s worth the wait. It’s worth the wait.
Folks died for this right that-- I mean, you know,
so I would never take advantage of it, you know, so...
I’m here for the long haul.
It’s a life-and-death matter.
It really is.
It’s not gonna be the courts that save us.
It’s not gonna be the justices in their robes.
It’s got to be the people.
FUDGE: If you were to come out to vote,
we could elect who we wanted to,
we could get done what we wanted to,
and we could make sure that our voice was heard.
The fight for voting rights
needs to be a defining civil rights issue today.
HOLDER: The desire to keep certain people
away from the polls,
it’s a reality that we have to be prepared to confront.
But unless we confront that reality
and base actions on that reality,
we won’t make the progress
that we all want to make in this country.
(indistinct chanting)
I believe in our democracy.
I believe in our nation.
And I think our strongest patriotism
is a patriotism that says that every voice matters
and that every vote counts
and that we will do everything in our power to make it so.
♪ ♪
Let’s stop thinking that our voice don’t matter...
-That’s right. -...and vote!
Educate yourself and know who you’re voting for.
Because it’s a lot of us.
-It’s a lot of us. -That’s right.
It’s a lot of us!
CROWD: It’s a lot of us!
♪ ♪
♪ The table ’bout to turn ♪
("Turn Tables" by Janelle Monáe playing)
♪ The table ’bout to turn ♪
Register to vote.
Even if you think you’re already registered,
check your registration status.
Seriously, check to see if you’re registered to vote
at AllInTheFilm.com.
Don’t be a victim of voter purge.
If you’re registered, make sure the information is correct.
If not, update it.
♪ The table ’bout to turn ♪
Oh, and make sure to keep your receipts.
Take a screenshot
so that no one can deny your registration.
Get informed.
Find out what documents or I.D.
are required for you to vote in your state
so that you will have time to prepare to vote.
Make a plan.
Look up your polling place and the time it’s open
and how you’re getting there
and what you can do to stay safe if you’re casting
your socially distanced vote in person.
Some states allow any voter to vote absentee.
Other states have stricter requirements.
Head to AllInTheFilm.com to find out
details about your state and how to request a ballot.
Go to 2020Census.gov and complete your census form.
Ensure that your community is counted
and help combat gerrymandering.
And most importantly, know your rights.
If the polls close and you’re in the line, man,
stay in the line because you got the right to vote.
If you make a mistake on your ballot, ask for a new one.
If the machines are down at your polling place,
ask for a paper ballot.
If they can’t find your name on the voter rolls,
then ask for a provisional ballot.
And if you run into any problems
or have any questions on Election Day,
call the Election Protection Hotline:
866-OUR-VOTE.
-Think you got all that? -Are you all in?
Perfect. Now...
Go and tell literally everyone...
-Everyone. -Everyone.
Everyone you know.
Literally everyone you know.
♪ ♪
♪ Yeah, uh ♪
♪ I been flipping through my timeline ♪
♪ Trying to get my mind right ♪
♪ My city cried out ♪
♪ I got to cool down, but I’m under pressure ♪
♪ Cooking with my Crisco ♪
♪ Look at where my fist go ♪
♪ A renegade when I’m in a rage ♪
♪ I got to cool down, but I’m under pressure ♪
♪ I keep my hands dirty, my mind clean ♪
♪ Got a new agenda with a new dream, uh ♪
♪ I’m kicking out the old regime ♪
♪ Liberation, elevation, education ♪
♪ America, you a lie ♪
♪ But the whole world ’bout to testify ♪
♪ I said the whole world ’bout to touch the fire ♪
♪ And the tables ’bout to, t-t-tables ’bout to ♪
-♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪ -♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪
♪ Ain’t gon’ stop until they ♪
-♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪ -♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪
♪ Now it’s time for it to ♪
-♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪ -♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪
♪ We can’t wait for it to ♪
-♪ Turn, turn ♪ -♪ Yeah, the table ’bout to turn ♪
♪ Turn ♪
♪ It’s a boomerang booming back, yeah ♪
♪ You laid a egg, now it’s ’bout to hatch, yeah ♪
♪ You’re gaslighting, ’bout to meet your match, uh ♪
♪ You fuck up the kitchen, then you should do the dishes ♪
♪ Burning down plantations, uh ♪
♪ Ain’t no park and I don’t need no validation ♪
♪ I light sage when I’m in a rage, uh ♪
♪ I don’t need permission, I got my intuition ♪
♪ Hands dirty, mind clean ♪
♪ A different vision with a new dream, uh ♪
♪ We kicking out the old regime ♪
♪ Liberation, elevation, education ♪
♪ I said, America, you’s a lie ♪
♪ But the whole world ’bout to testify ♪
♪ I said the whole world ’bout to testify ♪
♪ We gon’ watch the table, now we gon’ watch the table ♪
-♪ T-Turn ♪ -♪ Turn ♪
-♪ Turn, turn ♪ -♪ Turn, turn ♪
♪ That’s right ♪
-♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪ -♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪
♪ We waited too long, you gotta ♪
-♪ Turn, just turn, turn ♪ -♪ Turn, turn, turn ♪
♪ We see it all now ♪
-♪ Turn, turn ♪ -♪ Turn, said the table got to turn ♪
-♪ Turn, tables, turn ♪ -(whoops) ♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Turn, tables, turn ♪
♪ Turn, tables, turn, turn, tables, turn ♪
♪ Turn, tables, turn ♪
♪ Turn, tables, turn, turn, tables, turn ♪
♪ Turn, tables, turn ♪
♪ Turn. ♪
(song ends)