Abrams continues voter suppression smears

Claims of voter suppression tainted Georgia’s political landscape this election cycle, impacting races up and down the ballot, but none more so than the contest for governor.

The Democratic nominee in that race, Stacey Abrams, and her allies leveled accusations of voter suppression against the Republican nominee, Brian Kemp, in an effort to undermine his victory on Election Day. Complicating matters further for Kemp was the fact that he was also the sitting secretary of state with responsibility for administering elections.

Even though the ballots have been counted, indicating Kemp prevailed by a margin of 54,000 votes—well out of run-off territory—Abrams has refused to drop the notion of voter suppression.

"It was not a free and fair election," Abrams said in a recent television interview. "We had thousands of Georgians who were purged from the rolls wrongly. … It was not fair to the thousands … forced to wait in long lines because they were in polling places that were under-resourced, or worse, they had no polling places to go to because more than 300 had been closed."

"It was not fair to the thousands that were put on hold with their registrations," Abrams added. "Brian Kemp oversaw for eight years the systematic and systemic dismantling of our democracy, and that means there could not be free and fair elections in Georgia this year."

If Kemp, as Abrams claims, sought to disassemble democracy in Georgia, he failed by every measure.

Not only has overall voter registration increased by 20 percent since Kemp took office as Georgia’s secretary of state, but final tabulations indicate turnout in 2018 dwarfed previous midterm elections.

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