Celebs bow down to Stacey Abrams as Georgia flips blue in Biden’s favor
Seems like most of Hollywood was on that midnight train to Georgia as the state‘s vote total in the presidential election flipped blue on the fourth day of counting, securing a lead for former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris.
But it was another Democrat — recent Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting-rights champion Stacey Abrams — who came into the Twitter spotlight Thursday and early Friday, as celebrities and many others praised her efforts to fight voter suppression in the state.
“Stacey Abrams did an incredible thing in GA and across the country,†tweeted “Bad Feminist†author Roxane Gay. “After losing her election due in large part to voter suppression, she continued to organize and work to ensure voting rights to the most disenfranchised people.â€
“I ... love that stacey abrams was forced to vote on a provisional ballot because she had been purged in her own gubernatorial race and then she registered almost one million georgians two years later.....!!!!!!!†wrote “Saturday Night Live†star Bowen Yang.
During Abrams’ 2018 run for governor, Black voters in various Georgia neighborhoods reported insufficient election resources, long lines at polling places and faulty voting equipment, among other barriers to the democratic process. The office of Abrams’ opponent, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, was in charge of the election and stalled 53,000 new voter applications under legal review.
According to the Associated Press, 70% of those applications were submitted by Black Georgians. Kemp, who ended up winning the election by about 55,000 votes, has denied any intentional efforts by his office to suppress voting rights.
Since then, Abrams has been dedicated to protecting the voting rights of marginalized groups across the country via her Fair Fight initiative, waging war on controversial practices such as voter-roll purging, removal of polling locations and the restrictive “exact match†rule for ballot signatures, which was in play during her gubernatorial campaign.
In celebration of Georgia’s Biden-Harris surge, comedian Ziwe lauded Abrams as an “icon trailblazer radical genius queen role model hero goliath,†while “RuPaul’s Drag Race†star Shea Couleé hailed her as a “democracy saving queen.â€
Abrams herself welcomed the news by paying tribute to her fellow Fair Fight organizers, as well as the late civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis, who similarly championed voting rights while representing Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. If the results continue in Biden and Harris’ favor, 2020 would mark the Democrats’ first presidential election win in Georgia since 1992.
“So many deserve credit for 10yrs to new Georgia,†Abrams tweeted early Friday morning. “Always John Lewis. ... My heart is full. Georgia, let’s shout out those who’ve been in the trenches and deserve the plaudits for change.â€
Overnight, Biden and Harris also took the lead in the vote count in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, which could win them the White House. See more celebrity reactions to the latest election developments below.
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