Republican redistricting effort is ‘evil incarnate’, Stacey Abrams tells new Guardian podcast

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has slammed Republican-led states’ efforts to redraw their congressional maps to favor their party as “evil incarnate”. In an interview with the Guardian’s new podcast, Stateside with Kai and Carter , Abrams argued that what she said amounted to intentional “cheating” to suppress racial minority voting power must be fought in the courts and on the ballot. “We’ve got to point out that they are not just rigging the game,” she said. “They are not just cheating. They’re kneecapping the players. They are taking out the opposition. That’s not fair. That is not right. That is not American.” The gerrymandering question has raised the stakes beyond party lines, she stressed. “This is not just cheating so Republicans can beat Democrats – this is cheating so that authoritarians can dismantle our systems so they don’t have to compete ever again.” Stacey Abrams on why gutting of the US Voting Rights Act is 'evil' – Stateside with Kai and Carter Two weeks after the US supreme court effectively gutted a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v Callais, a string of Republican-led states have scrambled to redraw their congressional maps to favor the GOP in upcoming elections by actively eliminating majority-minority districts. “Let’s be clear,” said Abrams. “This is evil. When evil is about what you strip from another in pursuit of power, this is evil. …