Voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. The winner will be announced in October of this year, and in the meantime, other nominees range from former President Donald Trump to climate protection activist Greta Thunberg and the Black Lives Matter movement. Abrams helped lead voter mobilization efforts across her home state of Georgia ahead of the 2020 presidential election — and, in the first victory in the state for a Democratic presidential nominee since the 1990s, Joe Biden won Georgia in November. A couple of months later, Georgia elected its first two Democratic U.S. Senators in over a decade.
Abrams’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize was announced by Lars Haltbrekken, a Socialist Party-affiliated member of the Norwegian parliament. Haltbrekken commented as follows:
‘Abrams’ work follows in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s footsteps in the fight for equality before the law and for civil rights. Abrams’ efforts to complete King’s work are crucial if the United States of America shall succeed in its effort to create fraternity between all its peoples and a peaceful and just society.’
In Georgia, activists including Abrams have recently been sounding an alarm over oppressive new voting restrictions that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law. Despite the fact that no systematic security issues were uncovered under the state’s previous election guidelines, Kemp has imposed tough new provisions including new voter ID demands for mail-in voting, a restriction on the hours that mail-in ballot drop boxes can be used, a ban on outside organizations providing food and water to voters standing in line (no matter how long), and more. The legislation even bans mobile polling places, which were used in the highly populated area of Fulton County in the 2020 cycle.
Some Republican-backed election restrictions are tied to belief in the false idea that there were systematic fraud problems in the 2020 election. No court anywhere in the country has ever even partially accepted the idea that this supposed systematic fraud was present, but some Republicans just won’t abandon the idea.
