Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Bakari Sellers podcast.

My guest today is one of my CNN colleagues, one of the sharpest reporters in the game,

none other than Abby Philip. But before I get to Abby, I wanted to

talk about early voting, particularly how we should interpret long lines, often lines of

black folk voting in places like Texas and Georgia and

in states across the country. So like many of you when I see the long lines to

vote in places like Atlanta and Dallas that's a good sign of real enthusiasm.

This past week, on the first day of early voting in Harris County, Texas, which includes

Houston, almost 130,000 voters voted on the first day.

That is an increase of 47% from 2016, 47% from 2016.

After two days of early voting, in Georgia,

601,247 people have voted compared to 156, 2017 after two days of early voting in 2016.

That's a 285% increase.

You heard that right, a 285% increase. I love to see it. I voted in person myself in Bamberg County the first day of early

voting in South Carolina. But what concerns me is we still have too many places, particularly Georgia, where four, five, or in the case of John to Austin, the world famous record producer, 11 hour waits are common.

As much as I appreciate the enthusiasm, encourage people to vote early in person, we can't

normalize the kind of lines we're seeing because they are voter suppression

and action that we have to be more committed to fixing.

I understand that when we win next month and we flip the Senate will be focused on COVID and the economic recovery in January, that's priority 1A.

Priority 1B has to be the passage of election reform that consists of three parts.

First we need to pass the H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, restoring key provisions

of the Voting Rights Act that will give the DOJ the tools to sue states

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