Stacey Abrams cashes in: Amazon buys her voting rights documentary

Stacey Abrams is the James Comey of the voting rights movement. She is unable to accept the results of elections that don’t go her way, she is a perpetual victim using a phony narrative, and she has a knack for finding a way to profit from her political activism. She and Comey both have very large egos that must be fed.

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Amazon has purchased the rights to a documentary made by Stacey Abrams. For now, it is unnamed. She is breaking into the entertainment industry as a documentary maker and she will be credited as a producer of the documentary. There is a distinct tone to the press coverage – voter suppression is rampant and if the presidential election in November goes sideways for Democrats, you know it is what they will blame.

The documentary examines the often overlooked yet insidious issue of voter suppression in the United States in anticipation of the 2020 presidential election. The film interweaves personal experiences with current activism and historical insight to expose a problem that has corrupted American democracy from the very beginning, offering an insider’s look into laws and barriers to voting that most people don’t even know are threats to their basic rights as citizens of the United States.

In other words, America has always been bad, you see. Make no mistake, Amazon is being upfront that the decision to buy the Abrams documentary is because this is a presidential election year. It’s a “critical election year”. I would argue that every presidential election is critical but this year it is important for Democrats to blame Trump and his voters for the voter suppression.

Said Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, “In this critical election year, Stacey’s expertise and fearless stance against voter suppression will resonate strongly with audiences everywhere and can inspire positive change in supporting all Americans’ right to cast their vote.”

“Working with Stacey Abrams is the honor of a lifetime,” Garbus and Cortés added. “The story of voting rights is not just one of the civil rights movement and the 1960s. It’s a story for right now. It’s a monster movie where you think you’ve mortally wounded the beast, but it keeps rearing its ugly head, as last week’s primary in Georgia so painfully demonstrated. And nothing less than democracy is at stake.”

“Raising the alarm about voter suppression is critical to the integrity of our democracy,” Abrams said. “The failure of state leaders in Georgia and other states across the country to protect the rights of voters, as seen in the 2018 election and 2020 primaries, must be exposed and it must be stopped. Justice in our criminal justice system and the sacred right to vote are not equal for all Americans and we must find a way to change these systematic inequalities. As the 2020 election approaches, this documentary will help voters realize the power of their voices, and it will inspire them to overcome the obstacles of voter suppression.”

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Here’s the problem I have with the incessant sniveling coming from Stacey Abrams about voter suppression – she is just wrong about her premise that voter suppression was the reason for her loss in the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia. The reason for her loss was that 55,000 more voters voted for the other guy than for her. Georgia had a record turnout of voters, too – no one was being suppressed. Nonetheless, she, just like Hillary Clinton, latched onto this excuse for losing elections. Now she, like other Democrats, wants to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic and have all states go to mail-in voting. What could possibly go wrong? Most states aren’t set up for only mail-in voting and she knows that.

“Vote by mail is the safest way to vote,” Abrams recently told MNSBC. “I would say almost every state has the capacity to vote by mail. The challenge is that in a lot of states you have to have an excuse. In fact, Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama, today or yesterday, said that she wasn’t in favor of removing the excuse. The reality is everyone has an excuse — COVID-19. We need to be certain that even if things have tampered down by then, we have to prepare for it not to be so. That means we have to start planning now for the November election.”

Alleged voter suppression isn’t a national issue – it is a local issue. Long lines at polling places are often called voter suppression. What long lines point to, though, is incompetence at the hands of local officials. States are developing multi-point plans to accommodate in-person voting in November. Here in Harris County (Houston) Texas, for example, there were problems with long lines in some polling locations during the March primary. For July primary run-off elections, a plan has been put into place to make the process run smoother.

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“The way to do that is do better allocate machines to make sure that the number of machines that are in each polling location match the traffic that’s expected there,” Hollins said.

Hollins said his office has mapped out the process in order to get the results to central counting faster. Also, more machines were bought from other counties.

Now, they’re adjusting their plan because of the pandemic. That includes 57 early voting sites, five more than during the March early-voting period.

“We’re taking extra precautions around floor markers and spacing out the machines, plexiglass,” Hollins said.

They’ll also offer hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment for voters and workers.

“(We’re) providing masks for anyone who needs them, and we’re providing finger covers so that a voter can come in and operate that machine without physically touching it,” he said.

The July 14 runoff will feature 107 voting centers.

The documentary will first have a theatrical run, then it will be released on Amazon Prime Video later this year. I’m sure the timing will coincide with a heightened interest in the presidential election by the general public, probably after Labor Day.

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