MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript Interview with Stacey Abrams & Jon Ossoff

Interview

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Joining me to talk about that, Stacey Abrams, Founder of Fair Fight Action, election reform and education advocacy group. She ran for governor of Georgia against Brian Kemp in 2018, and Jon Ossoff, who won his party`s primary earlier this month and will face Georgia Republican Senator David Purdue in November.

It`s great to have you both.

Jon, let me start with you since you`re right now on the campaign trail and you have a kind of apples to apples comparison, which is you ran in a special election in 2017 and you`re running now and you started running before COVID and now you have to run in the COVID era. What does it mean? How do you do that?

JON OSSOFF, (D) GEORGIA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: Well, the door-to-door canvassing we would like to do is not possible. We`re putting public health first. But we are still running a robust volunteer program with hundreds of thousands of phone calls and text messages being sent.

And when you look at what happened in Georgia on election day, I mean, those are not issues unique to the COVID era, we have these issues in Georgia election after election. Stacey can speak to more detail to the specifics of the problems.

I think the good news is that despite six to eight-hour lines, despite absentee ballots that never arrived, there was record-setting turnout and record-setting Democratic turnout in Georgia, and people demonstrated were galvanized and energized to vote here in Georgia, which is the premiere battleground state this year, in this election.

HAYES: Stacey, what do you think about that in terms of the ways in which campaign -- election administration has to change, and we`ve heard people having issues in New York and we saw the images you saw from Louisville, as well as campaigns needing to change?

STACEY ABRAMS, FAIR FIGHT ACTION: Well, I think what Jon is absolutely right about is that we are seeing record turnout and record enthusiasm. And that`s half the battle in the campaign. But the other half is making sure that that enthusiasm can be harnessed, that we can stoke more enthusiasm through contact.

One of the ways we were so successful in 2018 was reaching out to people who didn`t think they belonged in the process. And I think the way that Jon is going about it, the way Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is running for our second Senate seat is going about it, is reaching people where they are, using digital, but also going analog, just making phone calls, doing the hard work of touching voters.

But the problem is, if we can get all that enthusiasm up, if we can generate the voter turnout, we must have election administrators who are prepared and who are resourced to actually conduct our elections. And what we saw happen in Kentucky and in New York today, what happened in Georgia, Wisconsin, what is happening again and again is the clarion call that tells us we have to get investment in our elections to meet this moment.

HAYES: Yeah, I want to -- Kentucky, just in slight defense of the administration there, I will note that the reporters who were covering that one location all day in Jefferson County there, it was an enormous location, there were no lines, people were moving through. So the general operation throughout that day was not these huge bottlenecks that we saw, Stacey, in the state of Georgia, to their credit.

But to the point that you both made, what`s so fascinating to me, right, as we run the experiment of what democracy looks like in a pandemic is we keep seeing record turnout. So in Georgia, the primary set a record in Georgia. It was more than 2.1 million votes cast, Democrats exceeded Republicans by more than 182,000 votes, according to the secretary of state`s office, early numbers we`re getting from Kentucky tonight is that absentee ballots alone are going to exceed typical primary turnout for Kentucky.

And John, it looks like when you add in-person, you`re seeing the same level of just intense voter enthusiasm in the midst of all the challenges in the state of Kentucky, as we saw in Georgia. What do you attribute that to?

OSSOFF: Well, there`s two factors at play here. The first is that we are in the midst of a public health and economic crisis, that is apparent to everyone, has been exacerbated by poor political leadership and bad government. And so bad politics for all of us is a matter of life and death, during a pandemic and during an economic crisis like this, has been hammered home in a way that I think is galvanizing record turnout and record enthusiasm.

And the other thing that`s at play, particularly in Georgia, where we had the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, where we just had the tragic shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, where we`ve had these massive issues with election administration and voting rights, not just this year, but election after election after election, is this awakening that there is fundamentally a need for civil rights, criminal justice, and voting rights advocacy and reform at the highest levels in this government, and we`re seeing people galvanized to come out and demand those rights.

I closed this primary that we just finished, focused relentlessly on the need for a new civil rights act and a new voting rights act and how I will champion those priorities in the United States Senate. And people are turning out in defense of civil rights, in defense of voting rights, and because they`re passionate about expanding and strengthening those rights here in America, in Georgia and across the country.

HAYES: Stacey, what do you think? As you look at these numbers, because I think we saw it in Wisconsin, too, I should note. You know, there`s some part of me that didn`t know how this was all going to go. Are people going to stay home? Are they not going to want to use the machinery of the mail-in ballot, because they haven`t done it before. And yet we really are seeing now, we have a enough data to show that like people are more determined than ever to vote in this election year.

ABRAMS: I think there are two piece. Is one, they`re determined to vote because they understand what`s at stake. It`s not that we`re simply redoing the 2016 election, we`re also redoing the 2010 election. It`s going to set the stage for the next decade of our lives. And folks remember what it felt like to win in `08 and lose in 2010.

But I think the other piece, and this goes back to Jon`s point, we have people who want to be involved, but -- and part of that is the fact that they know that they can mail in their votes. They don`t have to sacrifice their health to vote. And so we`re going to see an increase, but that increase has to be met with increased investment.

What we are witnessing in a lot of these states like Kentucky, where I give credit to both Governor Beshear and to the secretary of state Michael Adams, they both did their best to make sure that vote by mail works, but we always have to remember that not everyone can vote by mail and that`s why we have to maintain in-person early voting and in-person voting.

But more than that, we need the federal government to step in and help cash strapped states step up and scale up, because we are going to see unprecedented turnout. But we can`t let this primary turnout blind us to the fact that there are still millions of Americans who do not know, not whether they will vote for Biden or not, they don`t know if voting matters or not. And that`s why Georgia is so excited to have Jon Ossoff, a warrior who has spent his business life fighting corruption, documenting corruption and being a warrior against corruption, which we certainly have in our senators -- our current senators -- and Raphael Warnock, a moral warrior who has done his best to lift up the voices and needs of people across the state.

Those are the kinds of people we need to send to the senate, and that`s why I`m so excited that Georgia is a battleground this year.

HAYES: Georgia, a very rare thing happening in Georgia this year. Of course, there will be the presidential. Of course, it is a contested, probably swing state at the presidential level. And there are two senate races, doesn`t happen that often, so all of that means that Georgia is going to be the center of a lot of the political world for the next few months. Stacey Abrams and Jon Ossoff, thank you both.

ABRAMS: Thank you, Chris.

OSSOFF: Thank you.

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