What Will the U.S. Election Look Like Come November?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Are you concerned that any part, whether it’s the election in December — in November, whether it’s the primaries before, are in mortal danger right now from even happening, due to this disease and due to how it might be might be used?

STACEY ABRAMS, FMR. GEORGIA STATE HOUSE MINORITY LEADER, FOUNDER, FAIR FIGHT AND FAIR COUNT: When I created fair fight, we believe that there would be some catastrophe that would assail our elections. I never imagined it would be a pandemic. But we understood that we had to fight to protect the infrastructure of our democracy and start to fix what has been broken by voter suppression. That’s why we actually launched in 2019. And we are fully embedded in 18 states. We have 43 staffers across the country who are working on this effort, including in Wisconsin. Because we were on the ground during the primary, we were able to help man the hot lines, respond to the calls of concern and the questions. But we were also able to gather data and information that should support the federal desire and the federal imperative of actually putting money in the next CARES package, the stimulus relief package, that should invest in our election. The call is for $3.6 billion that will allow every single state to scale up its vote-by-mail operations and to also safely allow in-person early voting and in-person voting on the day of the election. This is critical, because we have families and voters who cannot use vote by mail. They may be disabled, have language barriers, or they may be homeless or displaced by COVID-19. And there are those who are going to try to vote by mail who may not be successful. Our responsibility is to make it as safe as possible. And the safest path is to ensure that early voting happens by mail. And I would point out this. The state of — the nation of South Korea began to experience COVID-19 around the same time as the United States. And on April 15, President Moon oversaw the highest turnout rate in a national election in South Korea in 30 years. If South Korea, a competent democracy, can do it, so can the United States. If we get the resources we need in time to deploy them to the states, every state has the capacity to do this work. They have the standards that they need to meet the moment. And we should have the desire to elect the people who can lead us out of this pandemic and then to recovery.