Brian Kemp has apparently gained the Georgia gubernatorial contest from Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, although she has yet to concede as of Wednesday morning. But looming over the vote margin is a terrible question for Georgia and the Republicans. For Kemp’s path to victory was far from honest.
Throughout his race for governor, Kemp took advantage of his office as Georgia’s secretary of state, where he “coordinates and monitors all election activity.” That gave him power over “voter registration; municipal, state, county, and federal elections; campaign finance disclosure for state and federal candidates and political action committees; and certification of election results.”
In short, he was in charge of overseeing his own election. Kemp should have removed himself from that process. He did not.
Since 2010, Kemp had purged 1.4 million names from the voter rolls, including more than 660,000 in 2017 and nearly 90,000 this year. His office rejected absentee ballots, citing a needlessly literalist interpretation of the law requiring ballot signatures to match exactly. He raised the bar for proving one’s citizenship to vote, a measure likely to discourage entire segments of the population from showing up. Along the way, the courts had to intercede to stop him.
But Kemp, undeterred, kept it up. In a last-minute attempt to drum up support and distract from earlier illegal actions, Kemp opened an investigation into the Democratic Party of Georgia. He alleged that Democrats and nonprofits advocating for good governance, who reported a vulnerability with election systems, were actually trying to hack the system. It was, to all appearances, a baseless allegation.
This manipulative behavior undermined Kemp’s own credibility and that of his party. It also undermines American democracy, turning an election into a partisan exercise of power.
The relentless push for victory, regardless of laws and principles, is ultimately a disservice to his supporters and his party.
Cheating, or even just the appearance thereof, must be disavowed by the Republican Party, if they care at all about the constitutional principles and values their candidates claim to stand for.
