The Georgia Governor Race continues to get more mainstream attention and Stacey Abrams (D. GA) fellow Democrats are rightfully calling out the Brian Kemp’s (R. GA) voter suppression tactics.
First, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D. NJ):
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said he believes the Georgia gubernatorial election is being “stolen” from Democrat Stacey Abrams. He spoke during an interview at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit on Tuesday.
“There should be a federal investigation. The Justice Department should be investigating that election to make sure it was fair and the decisions that were made were not to politically advantage someone but to protect voters and the voting process,” Booker said.
Booker, who was not up for reelection this year but is a potential presidential candidate in 2020, noted that he was commenting “from a perspective where I have not been in the weeds,” but he said, based on what he’s seen, he is convinced that Abrams isn’t getting a fair shot.
“I think that Stacey Abrams’s election is being stolen from her, using what I think are insidious measures to disenfranchise certain groups of people,” said Booker.
Second, Hillary Clinton:
As Georgia’s gubernatorial race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp remained uncalled, Hillary Clinton said that if the Democrat had had a “fair election,” she would have already been declared the winner.
“If she had a fair election, she already would have won,” Clinton said while addressing an event at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Texas on Tuesday. Clinton was at the school to receive the inaugural In the Arena Award, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
Abrams, who'd gained the support of high-profile Democrats and celebrities like former President Barack Obama and legendary talk show host Oprah Winfrey, was currently losing to her Republican opponent in the race for governor. The latest numbers showed Kemp ahead by nearly 59,000 votes.
Kemp, who received the endorsement of President Donald Trump, had already resigned from his former position as Georgia’s secretary of state and declared victory. He called Abrams’s refusal to concede a “disgrace,” though the Democrat said she would not give up until “every vote is counted.”
Abrams and her campaign hope for a runoff election next month, which would be mandated if Kemp’s lead dipped below 50 percent. As of Wednesday morning, the Republican candidate was at 50.3 percent.
Some of the developments in the race over recent days might help Abrams cut into Kemp’s lead.
And today, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D. OH):
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) blasted the GOP over the handling of Georgia's midterm elections, saying if Democrat Stacey Abrams does not win the race for governor, Republicans “stole it.”
“If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it,” Brown said. “It’s clear.”
Speaking at a National Action Network event in Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning, Brown, who has said he is considering a presidential run in 2020, said Republicans “can’t win elections because there is way more of us than there are of them.”
“They can’t win elections fairly,” Brown said. “They win elections by redistricting and reapportionment and voter suppression and all the ways they try to scare people, particularly people of color.”
And Abrams isn’t going down without a real fight:
The Georgia gubernatorial race won’t be decided until at least Friday evening, and Democrats are doing all they can to ensure sure every vote is counted before the results are certified. On Wednesday, Stacey Abrams partnered with the Georgia Democratic Party to release a TV commercial encouraging voters to share stories of difficulties they may have encountered while trying to cast their ballot. “This election, was your voice heard?” the ad reads. “Too many were silenced. For every voice to be heard, every vote must be counted. Share your story. Make Georgia count.”
The post-campaign campaign ad is a sign of just how fierce the fight has rown to ensure the legitimacy of Georgia’s elections. The months leading up to last Tuesday’s midterms were plagued by concern over voter suppression measures taken by Republican candidate Brian Kemp in his capacity as secretary of state, a position he refused to step down from until after the election. Over 300,000 voters were improperly purged from the rolls during Kemp’s tenure at the helm of Georgia’s elections, and his controversial “exact match” policy, which holds that the information on a voter’s registration must mirror that of other official documents, has been struck down in court as restrictive to voting rights. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that because of concern over unaccounted for provisional ballots, acting Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden must delay certifying the election results until at least Friday. The judge also ruled that the state must create and publicize a hotline and website so that voters can confirm whether their ballots were counted.
Though on election night it appeared Kemp was going to cruise to victory over Abrams, the race tightened as the night drew to a close. Abrams did not concede, believing that after provisional ballots were tallied neither candidate would finish with at least 50 percent of the vote, forcing a December 4th runoff. Kemp currently sits at around 50.3 percent and leads Abrams by just under 60,000 votes. Though Abrams believes there to still be around 30,000 outstanding provisional ballots, the state has claimed there are only 21,000 such ballots yet to be counted. Abrams would need to bring in around 19,000 additional ballots to force a recount, and around 21,000 to trigger a runoff.
This race is not over and we need to keep fighting hard. Click below to donate and get involved Abrams and her fellow Georgia Democrats campaigns:
Stacey Abrams
John Barrow
Carolyn Bourdeaux