Last Friday, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy asked Stacey Abrams for a “list of the provisions that you object to” in Georgia’s racist new voting law. But true to the spirit of Georgia law, the white elected official did not actually want to hear what a Black Woman Democrat had to say, cutting her off after she’d listed just a few of her objections.
“OK, I get the idea. I get the idea,” he interrupted during Abrams’s critique of the state’s extreme voter suppression plan, which includes an attempt to remove ballot boxes, particularly in predominately Black areas, and roll back the hours in which citizens would be able to vote. But because he, and the rest of the Senate, refused to hear all Abrams’s ideas, Kennedy likely did not get the idea, so Abrams helpfully made a video in which she allowed herself to finish her testimony, as the Senate she was testifying before did not.
The video begins with Kennedy saying “Tell me, specifically, just gimme a list of the provisions you object to.”
Abrams answers “Thank you, senator, for that question. I know we got cut off before, so let me continue.” then proceeds to do just that, citing the fact that the new Georgia bill makes it illegal to give those in line water, reduces the number of ballot boxes in one of the largest (and predominately Black) voting districts in the state from 38 to just 8, and makes it illegal to give elderly and disabled access to mobile voting, which puts them in physical peril should they choose to vote and be forced to stand in the unconscionably long lines the voting restrictions will now ensure. Also on that list was the fact that any weirdo who watches too many conspiracy theory videos can now charge as many people of voter fraud as he or she wants, and the onus for proving they are not a fraud will be placed on the accused.
During the nearly six minutes of her video, Abrams makes an extremely convincing case for the fact that Georgia is actively trying to discourage Americans from voting, which from my understanding of 90s MTV is the opposite of American values. Shame she could not have testified to these pretty blatant acts of voter suppression in a more official capacity like, say, before the Senate Judiciary Committee.