In Georgia’s hotly contested gubernatorial race, Stacey Abrams could become the first black woman governor in the country, ever. As minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, she fought to expand voter participation by offering alternative voting days and early voting, both of which help citizens with inflexible schedules. In 2013, she also founded a nonpartisan nonprofit, the New Georgia Project, which has registered more than 250,000 Georgians—mostly people of color, unmarried women, and young people. Their demographic title? The “new American majority.”

ELLE: What kick-started the New Georgia Project?

Stacey Abrams: In 2013, I launched the first version to sign people up for the Affordable Care Act. [I learned that] there were 800,000 people of color in Georgia who weren’t registered to vote. That’s basically the population of South Dakota. That crystallized for me the importance of voter registration. The voices that go unheard are often the most vulnerable.

When did you first recognize that voter rights were under threat?

My parents came of age in the Jim Crow South; I was never unaware of voter suppression. They were both involved in the civil rights movement as teenagers. My dad was arrested at 16 for helping register people to vote at a Hattiesburg, Mississippi, courthouse. My mom would take us with her to vote. She wanted us to see the act of casting a ballot and understand it was a sacred right.

Do you remember the first time you voted?

In 1992. I voted in the presidential primary for Bill Clinton at Spelman College in Atlanta.

What does voter suppression look like in Georgia?

In 2006, Georgia instituted voter ID laws, which have a disproportionate effect on the elderly and communities of color. If you don’t have access to a Department of Motor Vehicles office or you don’t have the money to pay for paperwork—[like] getting your birth certificate—it’s complicated and expensive. Georgia’s secretary of state has purged hundreds of thousands of voters, and he’s moved hundreds of thousands of voters to inactive status, meaning you’re still permitted to vote but candidates don’t know who you are. The third [issue] is the closure of precincts. If the precinct down the street closes, the next one is 10 miles away, and you don’t own a car, you have no way to vote.

How can we combat voter suppression?

As the Democratic leader, I fought back. Georgia now has a 40-day absentee ballot, meaning you can do a mail-in ballot without a fee. There’s a mandatory Saturday for voting and an optional Sunday. We have 21 days of early voting, which is the national standard. Some states have no early voting at all, so we have work to do!

This article originally appeared in the October 2018 issue of ELLE.

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