The Reel Review
This Amazon original documentary looks at the shameful history of voter suppression in America, including an eye-opening look at some barriers to voting of which most Americans are not even aware. Its history starts from the birth of the nation and includes the Jim Crow laws enacted after the abolition of slavery and other efforts, right up through modern day tactics in the 2020 Georgia primary which resulted in thousands of voters purged from registration rolls and hours long delays due to broken and/or reduced numbers of voting machines.
Incorporating reams of archival footage, news coverage and interviews, directors Lisa Cortés and Liz Garbus, the latter a co-director of the 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?, weave a very well laid out, fair and balanced history of voter suppression – something that SHOULD enrage every American.
Much of the film focuses on 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp, who, as then Secretary of State, oversaw, and many say rigged, the very election in which he was running. The film details his historic 2017 single day purge of 107,000 voters (presumably for not voting in prior elections), holding up 53,000 NEW registrations prior to the election due to a controversial “exact name match” law, and Election Day shortages of voting machines in predominantly black neighborhoods. Kemp won the election by 55,000 votes.
Where the film truly shines is in its explanatory journalism of the Voting Rights Act and the revelation of the devastating impact ending key components of it in 2013 have had on people of color and the poor.
All In: The Fight for Democracy could easily have been a depressing, negative tale of sour grapes – instead it is an educational, motivational and engaging – as it looks at how the efforts of a few have brought about tremendous change.
VOTE.
REEL FACTS
• Per the Electoral Integrity Project, a consortium of Harvard and Sydney Universities, The United States has an Integrity Index of 61 (out of 100), ranking last of all Western democracies.
• In the first U.S. Presidential Election in 1776, only 6% of the U.S. population (white men who owned land) could vote.
• Go to allinforvoting.com to obtain your voter registration status, information on your polling place and other important state laws pertaining to the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election.
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