Michael: Here’s a wild thought. In the 2016 election, researchers found that residents of entirely-Black neighborhoods waited, on average, 29% longer to vote than those in entirely-white neighborhoods. Kevin: Twenty-nine percent? That’s not a glitch. That sounds like a feature. What’s going on there? Michael: It’s the central question in Stacey Abrams' book, Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America. And she's uniquely positioned to answer it. This isn't just academic for her; she wrote this book right after her own 2018 run for governor of Georgia, a race that became a national flashpoint for voter suppression. Kevin: Right, so she lived it. This is a dispatch from the front lines. It’s no wonder the book is so highly acclaimed and, frankly, controversial. It’s not a theoretical exercise for her. Michael: Exactly. And she argues that what people experience as long lines, confusing rules, or lost registrations aren't just isolated problems. They're part of a sophisticated, multi-stage system designed to disenfranchise voters. She essentially maps out a quiet heist of democracy. Kevin: A heist. I like that. It’s not a loud smash-and-grab; it’s a slick, inside job. Where does it start?

Michael: It starts long before Election Day, at the very first gate: voter registration. This is where the system is designed to be as frustrating and opaque as possible, so people just give up. Kevin: Okay, but we have things like the Motor Voter Act, right? You can register at the DMV. It seems straightforward. Michael: It seems that way, but Abrams gives so many examples of how it fails. Take the story of a young woman named Diamond. In 2014, she was a freshman at Columbus State University in Georgia. She registered to vote at a high school drive, then updated her address with a canvasser from the New Georgia Project, an organization Abrams founded. She did everything right. Kevin: And let me guess, it didn't work. Michael: Of course not. When the New Georgia Project checked the rolls, she wasn't on them. They had a copy of her application—it was perfectly legible, perfectly complete. They had to fight to get her processed. Then, on Election Day, she goes to vote, and the poll worker tells her she doesn't exist in the system. Kevin: Wow. So even with an entire organization backing her up, she almost got erased. What happens to someone without that support? Michael: They're told to cast a provisional ballot, which we'll get to, or they just walk away. And this isn't just one person. In 2018, Georgia’s "exact match" policy was in full swing. This meant if your voter application had a single typo—a dropped hyphen in your last name, a mismatched initial compared to the DMV database—your registration was suspended. 53,000 applications were put on hold. And get this: 80 percent of them belonged to people of color. Kevin: That is staggering. It’s like a bouncer at a club who denies you entry because your shoelaces aren't tied in a perfect bow. The rule seems neutral, but it’s designed to keep certain people out. Michael: That's the perfect analogy. And if you make it past that bouncer, you get to stage two of the heist: accessing the ballot itself. This is where the physical barriers come in. Abrams tells this heartbreaking historical story about a man named Otis Moss Sr. in 1946 Georgia. Kevin: What happened to him? Michael: He was a sharecropper, and he put on his best suit to walk six miles to his polling place to vote against a segregationist candidate. When he got there, they told him, "Sorry, you're at the wrong place." They sent him to another precinct, six miles away. He walked there. They told him the same thing, sending him to a third location. By the time he walked all those miles and finally reached the correct school, the polls had closed. He never got to cast his vote. He died before the next election. Kevin: That’s just devastating. And you’re saying this still happens today, just in a different form? Michael: Absolutely. Instead of sending you on a wild goose chase, they just close the polling place. Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 with the Shelby County v. Holder decision, states with a history of discrimination no longer need federal approval to change voting laws. So, thousands of polling places have been shut down, overwhelmingly in Black and Latino communities. Or they’ll pass a restrictive voter ID law, like in North Dakota, that requires a residential street address—which thousands of Native Americans living on reservations don't have. Kevin: It’s a bureaucratic maze with no exit. They're not putting up a "No Entry" sign; they're just hiding the door and changing the map. So what’s the final stage of this heist? Let's say you navigate the maze and cast a vote. Michael: Stage three is making sure your vote doesn't count. This is the world of rejected absentee ballots and provisional ballots. In Georgia, your signature on your absentee ballot has to "match" the one on file. But who's the judge? A local election official with no handwriting training. Your signature changes over time, if you're sick, if you're rushed. Thousands of ballots are thrown out this way. Kevin: And the provisional ballots? I thought those were the safety net. Michael: They're supposed to be. The law says if there's a question about your eligibility, you can cast a provisional ballot, and they'll verify it later. But in practice, it’s often a trap. In the 2018 election, Texas rejected over 75% of its provisional ballots. North Carolina rejected over 17,000. You cast it thinking you've done your civic duty, but it vanishes into a black hole. Kevin: This is incredibly bleak. It feels like the game is completely rigged. So what's Abrams' solution? How do you fight back against a system that's designed to shut you down at every turn?

Michael: This is where the book pivots from diagnosis to prescription, and it's a radical shift in thinking. Abrams argues that for decades, the conventional wisdom for progressives has been to chase the mythical "swing voter"—that moderate, often white, suburban voter who might be persuaded. She says that's a losing strategy. Kevin: Why? That seems to be the entire focus of every national election. Michael: Because it forces you to water down your message and, more importantly, it ignores a massive, untapped source of power. She calls it the "New American Majority"—a coalition of people of color, young people, and progressive whites who are often written off as "low-propensity" or "unlikely" voters. Her argument is: stop spending millions trying to persuade someone who is ambivalent and start investing in mobilizing the people who are already aligned with you but have been systematically excluded or ignored. Kevin: That makes sense. You go to the people who want to be on your team instead of trying to convert the other team's fans. But how do you mobilize them, especially when they're the ones being targeted by the suppression tactics we just talked about? Michael: By embracing the very thing that is often used as a political weapon: identity. Abrams argues for reclaiming "identity politics" as a force for good. She says we need to stop pretending everyone's concerns are the same. Kevin: Hold on, because that’s the big critique, right? That identity politics is what divides us. That it pits groups against each other instead of focusing on what we have in common. Michael: Abrams tackles that head-on. She uses the powerful story of a woman named Kimya. Kimya was a survivor of horrific domestic violence; her husband shot her and their young daughter. She survived, and her daughter survived after a long recovery. Kimya became a fierce advocate. Her identity as a survivor, as a mother, as a Black woman, directly informs her political demands. She fights for gun safety laws, for better healthcare, for support for domestic abuse survivors. Kevin: Right, her politics come directly from her life experience. It’s not an abstract position. Michael: Exactly. For Kimya, her identity isn't a political wedge; it's the source of her purpose. Abrams argues that for millions of people, their race, their gender, their economic status, their sexual orientation—these aren't just labels. They are the lenses through which they experience the world and its injustices. To ignore that is to tell them they aren't seen. The goal is to build a coalition that acknowledges these different struggles while uniting around a shared vision of opportunity. Kevin: So it’s not about division, it’s about recognition. Recognizing that a farmer in a rural white county and a single mom in an urban Black neighborhood might both be struggling economically, but the barriers they face are different and require different solutions. Michael: Precisely. And she has the data to back it up. In her 2018 campaign, she didn't shy away from talking about race and specific community needs. The old guard said this would alienate white voters. But what happened? She mobilized voters of color at historic levels, and she earned the highest percentage of the white vote for a Georgia Democrat in a generation. It wasn't a zero-sum game. Kevin: Wow. So she proved you could expand the electorate without shrinking your existing base. You just have to actually talk to everyone. Michael: It’s what she calls the core of good campaigning: "The goal of reaching everyone, and meeting them where they live." It’s about seeing demography not as destiny, but as an opportunity.

Kevin: So when you put it all together, the playbook she’s laying out is really two-fold. Michael: That's a great way to put it. First, you have to see the architecture of the suppression. You have to understand that it’s not random bad luck; it’s a system with gates and traps at every stage. You have to call it what it is. Kevin: And once you see the system... Michael: You build a coalition that is bigger, more diverse, and more energized than the system is designed to handle. You overwhelm it. You do that by investing in the communities that have been ignored and by speaking directly to their needs and identities, showing them that their fight is your fight. Kevin: It really changes the goal. Abrams says something powerful in the book about this. She says, "As long as we make winning the only thing... we are going to continue to lose our democracy." Michael: Yes! That’s the core insight. Winning, for her, isn't just about getting more votes on one day. It's about building a system where people, especially those who have been told they don't matter, believe their voices can be heard. The real victory is their engagement. Kevin: That’s a profound shift. It’s not just about power; it’s about purpose. It makes you think about what your own role is in all of this. Michael: And Abrams is very clear on that. She says, "Citizenship requires constant action, which includes voting, protesting, and participating; and without the combination, we are all in jeopardy." It's a continuous process, not a single event. Kevin: So the takeaway isn't just to vote, though that's obviously critical. It's to be vigilant. Check your registration. Help a friend or family member check theirs. Pay attention to the local elections for school boards and county commissioners, because that’s where so many of these rules are made. Michael: Exactly. It’s about reclaiming your power at every level. Our time is now, as she says, to build the next, best version of America. Kevin: A powerful and, surprisingly, hopeful message after starting with such a grim diagnosis. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.