Democrat Stacey Abrams may not have won the governor's race in Georgia, but she remains a force to be reckoned with off the ballot.

In 2018, Abrams became the first black woman to receive a major party nomination for governor in any state. Her loss by about 55,000 votes to Republican Brian Kemp led to a lawsuit against the state alleging an unfair election, as Kemp oversaw the election in his former role as Georgia's secretary of state.

Abrams moved on to found several organizations, among them Fair Fight and Fair Fight 2020, that aim to educate voters and urge them to go to the polls.

Amid concerns about Congressional redistricting after the 2020 Census and the potential for voter suppression tactics that evoke the 1960s, we spoke to Abrams about her outlook for black voters this year.

Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q.: Can you tell us the issues that black people ought to be most concerned about as we head into the 2020 election season?

A.: I think there are two pieces to focus on. One is ensuring that voter suppression does not have its intended effect, which is by making it more difficult to vote, people decide not to bother trying. Our goal through Fair Fight and Fair Fight 2020 is to ensure that people know about the obstacles that are being placed in their way, but (are encouraged to) vote in even larger numbers to overwhelm the intention of the system. The best way to defeat voter suppression is by having such a high turnout that the barriers to voting have limited effect.

The second piece I want people to pay attention to is the 2020 Census. While people don't often think of that as a voting rights issue, it's directly related not only to the allocation of congressional leaders, but to how the (voting district) lines are drawn for school boards and for city council and county commissions and state legislatures. I would tell people to not only focus on voting but also make certain they are counted in the 2020 Census for the power that will come over the next decade.

Q.: What are the important local elections that African Americans should be looking at, beyond school boards?

A.: What tends to happen is that in election years featuring a presidential candidate, we only pay attention to the top of the ticket. But we know that if you care about criminal justice reform, you need to pay attention to district attorney races and to judicial races, because the people who decide how our community is treated in the court system get elected in that year. And we need to ensure that if someone is running for the school board, if they're making a decision over hundreds of millions of dollars that will be allocated to the benefit or to the detriment of our children, that we know who they are and we hold them accountable.

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Q.: What must black voters demand from the people who are running for these local offices?

A.: Number one, they need to be able to explain not only what they will do, but what they have done. That means not simply a list of theories, but a list of accomplishments. Because the other challenge is incumbency. We know that often the person who gets to stay the longest is the person who doesn't make anybody mad. But the fact that you don't do something that offends people is an insufficient reason to keep your job. Incumbents need to be held accountable for what they have delivered and, even if they can't get everything done that we want, be able to show how they tried.

Q.: What do you think about the national Democratic presidential pool right now? What must Democrats do, once they settle on the ticket, to better engage African Americans?

A.: There has to be early investment in those communities and that investment has to be more than a visit to a barbershop on Saturday and a church on Sunday. It has to be organizing in those communities. It has to be delivering communications and treating black voters the same way we treat the mythical swing voters. The issue with the swing voters is they can swing either Democratic or Republican. Black voters can either swing towards the polls or they can stay home, and that's the thing that we need to be most afraid of on the Democratic side of the aisle.

Q.: In 2018, Florida's voters approved a measure to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies who have completed their sentences. What do you see on the horizon for felon reinstatement nationwide?

A.: There are 22 states that currently have some form of felony disenfranchisement, which is a vestige of the Black Codes post-Reconstruction. Florida had the largest single population, leading with African Americans, who were held captive. The difference in Florida and Georgia is that Georgia does not allow for ballot initiatives. With most states that have these laws on the books, if ballot initiatives are used similar to what they did in Florida to take (the decision) out of the hands of a legislature and a governor who may be predisposed against it, then we can continue to make progress. But ultimately the challenge point has to happen at the national level. There's going to have to be federal legislation that recognizes that no matter which state you live in, your right to vote does not need to be eviscerated.