The left needs to learn how to lose an election without undermining the entire democratic process. Stacey Abrams provides an unfortunate case in point.
When asked whether or not the Georgia governor’s race was stolen, the Democratic candidate conceded to CNN’s Jake Tapper that her opponent, former Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, won — but not that he won fairly. She wouldn’t even say he was a “legitimate” governor.
“I will never deny the legal premature that says he is in this position, and I pray for his success. But will I say that this election was not tainted, was not a disinvestment and disenfranchisement of thousands of voters? I will not say that,” Abrams said, all but calling Republicans a bunch of cheats.
She was even less gracious in her begrudging concession-nonconcession speech:
Not long ago, the Left argued, and argued with good reason, that refusing to accept the results of an election was a threat to democracy. But now “fighting on” and casting doubt on the reliability of the ballot box is all the rage among progressive political stars. Look at the potential 2020 field:
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio claimed that if Abrams didn’t win the election, then Republicans “stole it.”
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton complained that “if [Abrams] had a fair election, she already would have won.”
While ballots were still being counted, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., claimed the “election is being stolen from her, using what I think are insidious measures to disenfranchise certain groups of people.”
So what are these insidious measures? And what is the evidence that Kemp stole the election? Mostly wild allegations pushed by Democrats and lapped up by the national media, casting doubt on an election that didn’t go their way.
Because Kemp was Georgia’s secretary of state, each of the arguments go in one form of the other, Kemp is guilty of everything that went wrong leading up to and on election day.
Voter rolls were purged, they argue, in order to disenfranchise minority voters.
Kemp did in fact do the purging in question. American Public Media reported that nearly 600,000 Georgians were removed from the rolls in 2017 by the secretary of state’s office. But this isn’t a conspiracy. This was the result of a “use it or lose it” bill signed by a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, and passed by a Democratic legislature in 1997.
The 600,000 removed from the rolls were removed because they hadn’t voted in the last three elections. Voters don’t get tossed without warning, though, as Michael Warren of The Weekly Standard reported earlier in October. If they haven’t moved out of state, then they are notified. Each voter is given a menu of options to reactivate his registration, and up to four years to complete this process.
Granted, 600,000 is a high number to purge. Again, Warren reported, the increase resulted from a failed lawsuit over alleged racial bias by the group Common Cause and the NAACP. Georgia won the case at the Supreme Court, allowing the dead, the convicted, and former residents who had moved away to be removed from the rolls. Suppression? Hardly.
What about the polling places that were closed? Surely it was a sinister effort by Kemp to lengthen lines and keep people from voting.
Well, no. There were delays, yes. There have been 214 precincts closed since 2012, according to an analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But Kemp had absolutely nothing to do with closing a single polling place. Those offices were shuttered by county election officials, not the secretary of state.
Finally, and laughably, there were delays caused by voting machines without power cords. As of this writing, there is no sign that Kemp or any of his allies snuck into polling stations and stole extension cords. If there was any evidence of this, the Republican should not be governor. Not just because this would be illegal, but because only an idiot would try to steal an election by stealing a charge cord.
In the end, cords were found and voting commenced.
None of this is overly complicated. It just takes time to explain. This is why the Left won’t learn to lose an election gracefully. It was beyond the pale to question the sanctity of the ballot box two years ago. Now it is standard operating procedure because cries of fraud make for easy excuses, norms and institutions be damned.
