Doann Houghton-Alico

For Intelligent, Inquisitive People

Make your choice and VOTE

Oligarchy based on greed, bigotry, total disregard for both environmental and humanitarian crises, and fear mongering OR a Republic based on democratic values of law, justice, and humaneness

You may want to break it down into smaller, personal issues, but really, this election is only about those two.

There are several of the midterm elections that demonstrate that dichotomy. The Georgia governor’s race is one. It is using voting rights as it’s main focus, not to mention racism. It’s the race between Stacey Abrams, House Minority Leader for the Georgia General Assembly and State Representative for the 84th House District;  and Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Secretary of State and avid Republican Trump supporter.

One of the crucial issues in Georgia’s voter suppression techniques is their “exact match” law. Quote from politifact.com relating to this.

“Reasons for no matches, the lawsuit said, include: the transposition of a letter or number, deletion or addition of a hyphen or apostrophe, the accidental entry of an extra character or space, and the use of a familiar name like ‘Tom’ instead of ‘Thomas.’” As a result of this law, “About 53,000 voter registration applications are pending in Georgia — and the vast majority are from African-Americans, according to an Associated Press analysis.” I want to mention that I have a hyphenated last name. You can’t imagine the variations of this shown in various documents, forms, etc., no matter how I type it. One even shows the second half of my last name as my first name, in spite of the fact that I’ve been told twice that it has been fixed!

And who is in charge of creating these pending applications? Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State. Yes, state Secretaries of State do oversee voter registration, BUT they don’t usually run for office while doing so. Kemp has refused to exit or recuse himself from this responsibility while running. A lawsuit has been filed against this state law but won’t be decided before the midterms.

Stacey Abrams has been endorsed by many organizations including: United Auto Workers, Georgia AFL-CIO, United Food and Commercial Workers, #VOTEPROCHOICE, and the Georgia Sierra Club. She is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Examples of her positions on just a few issues include: a commitment to funding public schools and protecting them from privatization; creating jobs involved in environmental protection and green industries and an advocate for addressing climate change; a strong supporter in her legislative work for healthcare for the disadvantaged, elderly, and women.

Links:

To learn more about her positions, go to https://staceyabrams.com/issues/

To help her campaign, go to https://staceyabrams.com/action/

“Remember this in the darkest moments, when the work doesn’t seem worth it, and change seems just out of reach: out of our willingness to push through comes a tremendous power… Use it.” Stacey Abrams

Whatever you do: VOTE.

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