:strip_icc()/i.s3.glbimg.com/v1/AUTH_59edd422c0c84a879bd37670ae4f538a/internal_photos/bs/2020/a/f/wnMVypR1mfHDwcP4uDNw/000-8uf3ff.jpg)
[ad_1]
The Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, Joe Biden, approached the electoral victory of this Friday (6) with the turn of the vote counting in the state of Georgia.
With 98% of the polls counted, Biden’s difference with Republican Donald Trump was just over 1,500 votes, according to The New York Times. State officials have already announced that they will do a tally, regardless of the final result.
Even with the stage wide open, however, the Democratic candidate’s performance in what is considered a traditional Republican stronghold is already considered a feat by the party. The last time a Democrat took all 16 state delegates was in 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected president.
Part of the action in 2020 has been attributed to the mobilization of activists who in recent years have dedicated themselves to increasing the participation of black voters and other minority groups at the polls. Voting in the US is not required.
One of the exponents of this movement is lawyer Stacey Abrams, 46. A candidate for state government in 2018, she lost by a small margin of votes to then-Republican candidate Brian Kemp after a tumultuous vote-recount process that lasted days.
From the defeat to the registration of 800 thousand new voters
At the time, Abrams accused the campaign of the adversary, who had been secretary of state, of working to suppress minority votes.
A year earlier, Georgia had passed a law, called the “exact match law,” which required that the names of voters on voting lists be exactly the same as those on state identification documents. If there was a different script or accent, the citizen would not be able to vote until additional checks are carried out.
Nov. 2: Stacey Abrams, former minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, speaks in Atlanta – Photo: Brandon Bell / Reuters
Civil rights groups went to court at the time against the legislation, but because of it, the registrations of 53,000 voters, 70% of whom were black, were suspended.
Since at least 2013, when he created the New Georgia Project, Abrams has been working to increase the participation of these groups among registered voters.
Considered an enclave of conservative white voters, Georgia has undergone a demographic transformation in the last decade.
According to the organization’s website, the population grew 18%, thanks to an increase in the participation of blacks, young people between 18 and 29 years old, and single women.
These groups represent 62% of the voting age population, but only 53% of registered voters, the platform says.
Following the defeat in 2018, Abrams expanded his role and founded the Fair Fight organization, which began denouncing what was seen as flaws in America’s electoral systems and encouraging minorities and young voters to exercise their right to vote.
Jorge Pontual analyzes the reasons why Biden leads in Georgia, traditionally republican
In an interview with NPR radio on November 2, on the eve of the elections, Abrams said that in the past two years, the organization has managed to register more than 800,000 new voters in Georgia. Of the total, 49% are black and 45% are under 30 years of age.
He was born in the state of Wisconsin, grew up in Mississippi, and at age 16 he moved to Georgia with his five brothers and parents, who were going to study theology at Emory University to become pastors.
She graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta, historically attended by black women, graduating with an honorable mention magna cum laude.
He then graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in public policy and a law degree from the prestigious Yale University.
The lawyer was a state deputy for 11 years, between 2007 and 2017, and was a Democratic leader for 7 years.
Parallel to his political career, Abrams also devoted himself to literature.
Under the pseudonym Selena Montgomery, she wrote several fiction books and, under her original name, recently published two non-fiction works: the political manifesto Our Time is Now, released in 2020, and Lead from the Outside (2018).
In an interview with the New York Times magazine in 2019, when asked if he wanted to take a break from political life to dedicate himself to writing, he replied: “I would love to, but what moves me now and what the moment requires. – is that I try to find out how I can, in the most effective way possible, preserve and improve our democracy and challenge the policies that continue to aggravate poverty ”.
