Welcome to Getting Curious, I'm Jonathan Van Ness, and every week I sit down for a 40-minute conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.

On today's episode, I'm joined by Stacey Habrooms, voting rights advocate and former minority leader of Georgia's House of Representatives, where I ask her, how can we shabla him on voter suppression?

Welcome to Getting Curious, this is Jonathan Van Ness, I'm so excited for this our guest, and it's...

Sometimes I talk about how it's weird to say excited about, you know, anything in these times. There's so much to keep up with, and so much to...

Yeah, there's so much to keep up with and be mad about sometimes, but I'm so excited that our guest is here.

So welcome to Getting Curious, Stacey Abrams, how are you?

I know, well thank you so much Jonathan for having me.

Well thank you so much for taking your time to be here.

So I guess I just want to quickly preface who you are, if anyone is listening to this, if they have for some reason been living under a rock, like no shame, but you know, you know whatever.

So you were famously the first black woman to run as a majority party gubernatorial nominee in the US, which I didn't realize when you ran for governor in 2018 of Georgia, that you were the first black woman to run as a major gubernatorial party nominee.

So congratulations on that feat, but basically due to a lot of systematic voter suppression, Brian Kemp, the opponent who you were running against, one in that election, since then you have launched an incredible initiative called Verified that I cannot wait to talk about.

But also you were in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 17, which I also just honed in on a lot thinking about, you know, your time there before this interview because you were in the Georgia House of Representatives in the wave of the Tea Party in 2010 and then you became the House Minority Leader in 2011 until 2017.

So I just think that's really like very prolific and such experience and that is for lack of a better word, so cool that you did that.

So yeah, I'm done talking now. So now, you know, hopefully everyone understands the level of your just incredibleness and basically the question is, how are we going to protect our election in 2020? That's really kind of the central thing that I'm thinking of and that's kind of why I wanted you to come talk to us because I can't think of a better person to talk to than you.

So yeah, so welcome. I've never done such a long interim. So, I'm so excited. I never ever apologize to a politician for actually being nice to us. It's unexpected and very kind. Thank you.

So my first question is it's like to you and to kind of everyone, what would like the most well oiled machine or like most, you know, legitimate so to speak election look like says the most efficient effective and well oiled election looks like giving people the opportunity to vote in the way that's most effective for them.

That means voting by mail you don't have to ask for a ballot. They send one to you automatically by virtue of your citizenship and your eligibility.

You have it postage paid. They send you a little booklet that explains who's on the ballot, what's on the ballot, what everything means. They don't tell you what to do. They just make sure you understand what's happening.

The same booklet comes to you if you decide you want to vote in person and you are given at least 15 days to vote early. You can go to any neighborhood center, cast your vote.

You don't have to try to figure out which street you live on on Thursday in order to know where you can go, cast your ballot, but you go to these voting centers, you go to a machine, you cast your vote.

And you're able to be done or you go on election day and on election day, you show up, it takes no more than 30 minutes to go through the entire process.

And the reason you have to have all three of these things and the best elections is that there's some people for whom voting at home is not, it's not credit.

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