Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams continues to insist that her Republican opponent, incumbent governor Brian Kemp, is using his position to suppress votes, even as the Peach State smashes early-voting records.
Although polling suggests Abrams is unlikely to win her race, she doubled down over the weekend on her claim that voter suppression would be the only possible cause for an electoral defeat against Kemp.
“And while the polls are always going to tell the story you want to see, what we know is that the untold story is that this is a tight race, it is neck and neck, and we believe that we are on a path to victory if we can get all our voters turned out and if they can navigate the difficulties put in place by Brian Kemp and [Georgia secretary of state] Brad Raffensperger,” Abrams said during a conversation with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Saturday.
Abrams’s criticism comes amidst record-shattering early voting in Georgia.
As of Saturday, 2.5 million Georgians had already voted either by mail or via early ballot, surpassing the previous record of 2,114,114 by 20 percent. The rush to the polls was immediate: By the second day of early voting in 2022, ballot totals had already surpassed the number of votes cast two days into early voting for the 2020 presidential election — and had nearly doubled the 2018 total. By the third day of early voting, early voting had increased 85 percent over the same period in the 2018 midterm.
When asked by Velshi how she squared the massive amount of early voting with her claims of voter suppression, Abrams argued that suppression efforts have, motivated voters to turnout preempting the restrictive measures. They “understand that Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger put barriers in place, that they’re going to be denied access to food and water in lines…They know that there have been more difficulties put in place for absentee ballots,” Abrams said.
Abrams has consistently accused Kemp and his cabinet of implementing policies that contributed to her electoral defeat back in 2018, when 55,000 votes separated the two of them. Abrams has also insisted that state voting machines “erased 100,000 votes” during the election.
During the gubernatorial debates last Sunday, Abrams said the 107 Georgia sheriffs who support Kemp did so because they “want to be able to take black people off the streets.”