Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown has matter-of-factly claimed, without evidence, that Republicans will have “stolen” the Georgia governor race from fellow Democrat candidate Stacey Abrams.
The Oprah-backed Democrat candidate for Georgia governor, Stacey Abrams, was handily defeated by Republican opponent Brian Kemp 50.3%-48.8%, with a libertarian candidate taking the remainder of the vote. Kemp won with nearly 60,000 more votes, but there’s still controversy over a week after election day as Abrams refuses to concede her loss.
Her campaign has filed a number of lawsuits that have led to more votes being counted, and raised questions about how reliably votes were counted. Since then Kemp’s lead has slightly shrunk to 50.24%, while Abrams rose to 48.82%. Kemp needs at least 50% plus one vote to avoid a runoff election, and needs to defeat Abrams by at least a one-point margin to avoid a recount (he’s currently 1.42 points ahead).
It’s in this scenario that Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown claimed that the election will have been stolen, if Abrams loses.
This, despite endless media hysterics attacking President Trump and Marco Rubio for their evidence-based concern about election tampering in Florida.
According to The Hill, Brown said, “If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it. It’s clear.” He then accused Republicans of cheating.
“[Republicans] can’t win elections because there is way more of us than there are of them. They can’t win elections fairly. They win elections by redistricting and reapportionment and voter suppression and all the ways they try to scare people, particularly people of color.”
WATCH:
Was there voter disenfranchisement in Georgia?
Abrams has claimed that Georgia voters “have been purged, they have been suppressed, they have been scared.” The world’s biggest sore loser also agrees. “If she [Abrams] had a fair election, she would have already won,” Hillary Clinton told an audience yesterday.
So what’s the basis for these claims? Two events:
- 53,000 voter registrations have been deemed “pending” by Georgia, and most (70%) are for African-American and other minority voters.
- Georgia purged a large number of inactive registrations off their voter rolls last year (and most inactive voters were minorities).
To the first point, there’s a misunderstanding of what a “pending” voter registration is. Georgia requires voters to submit either a verifiable driver’s license number or a valid Social Security number in order to register. The “pending” registrations are mostly caused by inconsistencies between the information listed on their voter registration form and their information as listed in the relevant database (such as a different listed birthday, middle name, etc.). Voters with “pending” registrations have 26 months to fix the errors – and can still vote as long as they present a driver’s license of valid photo ID at the polls.
In regard to the second point, that Georgia purged inactive voters last year, it’s hard to imagine how this qualifies as “disenfranchisement.” All those purged from the registrations were notified via a prepaid return postcard telling them that they were inactive, and can become active again by returning that very notice with the appropriate information.
That’s some pretty incompetent “voter disenfranchisement” if you ask me.
