From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

In 2018, Stacey Abrams ran for Governor of Georgia and lost by just 54,723 votes to Republican Brian Kemp, who was then

serving as Georgia's Secretary of State. Before Kemp entered the governor's race, he purged

1.4 million voters from the rolls and instituted many other policies to dissuade people from

voting. It's a story of the real-world impact of voter suppression.

What happened in that race was egregious, but it was not unique. In the aftermath of the election,

amidst calls for her to run for Senate and even president, Stacey Abrams has devoted herself to voter

protection. Now, in 2020, with the presidential election underway, her organization

Fair Fight is on the front lines of the effort to educate, empower, and motivate people to vote.

We're so lucky to have Stacey Abrams on the podcast today to talk about voting, elections,

and the future of American democracy. Stacey Abrams, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

Stacey, you ran for governor of Georgia in 2018.

You were previously a state rep,

and then you went on to provide the response

to the state of the union,

and people have been approaching you from all corners of the country,

asking you to run for all manner of positions.

I want to start out by asking, how does it feel to have been thrust into the national political spotlight so quickly?

Well, I appreciate the characterization.

I will say I've been working for the last decade in Georgia, helping to rebuild not only the infrastructure of the Democratic Party,

...