It is imperative that we, as a nation, and in the state of Georgia, do everything we can to protect and expand voting rights and election integrity. Restoration of the Voting Rights Act is the first step. Since the Supreme Court decided states could make changes to their election laws without prior federal approval, states like Georgia have purged over 17 million voters from the rolls and made it increasingly difficult for voters to register.

We must protect the democratic process by:

• Ending racist voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering.

• Having an election day holiday.

• Enacting automatic registration without difficult-to-obtain identification documents.

• Expanding early voting and reopening closed voting locations.

We must also protect the integrity of our elections by:

• Providing national security and tighter state security for our election process and voter rolls, doing all we can to eliminate hacking and other outside interference.

• Replacing outdated voting machines with ones that have a two-check system, and having oversight of local voting locations and elections, are also important steps to ensure election integrity.

Finally, creating independent, bi-partisan redistricting commissions to draw district lines would help end the gerrymandering used by political parties to influence election outcome.

Creating independent, bi-partison redistricting commissions to draw district lines would help end the gerrymandering used by political parties to influence election outcomes.