With voting laws and former President Donald Trump’s election conspiracy theories back in the news, it is once again time to raise the question: Why are people still taking Stacey Abrams seriously?
Abrams is every bit the conspiracy theorist as Trump, lacking only the equivalent of the Jan. 6 riot to cap off the refusal to live in reality. Abrams lost by more than 54,000 votes in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race, a margin wide enough to avoid an automatic recount in an election that saw record turnout, yet she still blamed “voter suppression” for denying her the victory. Her opponent, Brian Kemp, was Georgia’s secretary of state at the time, and Abrams maintained that purging voter rolls and precinct closures (that were outside Kemp’s control) were proof of a stolen election. Yet, she never offered any proof to back up her claims.
While Democrats pretended then and continue to pretend that Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia, their claims remain as empty as ever. PolitiFact determined that there was “no proof” that voter suppression kept her from winning. The Washington Post fact-checker couldn’t bring itself to declare it an outright lie but similarly suggested there was no proof for the claim. A USA Today fact check was far more straightforward: “There’s no empirical evidence that now-Gov. Kemp stole that election from her.”
But Abrams, whose entire claim to fame is her fictional victory, is still humored as a legitimate voice on voting laws across the country. Abrams is now described as a “voting rights activist,” weighing in on election laws from Georgia to, most recently, Arizona. While media figures like CNN’s Jake Tapper invoke the Nazis to denounce Trump’s “big lie,” Abrams is a welcome guest treated as an authoritative voice on voting laws. Her latest book is being adapted for television.
The lie that Abrams was cheated out of being Georgia’s governor has been pushed by Democratic senators such as Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and Cory Booker (New Jersey). Abrams gave the Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union address in 2019, with the glowing endorsement of party leaders. She’s being propped up for a second run against Kemp next year.
Abrams set the stage for Trump’s post-election circus. Yet, while he has rightly been confined to ranting on his new blog, Abrams still does the rounds as the go-to activist on all things voting. The fact that she didn’t inspire a riot doesn’t make her claims any less awful. Those who continue to promote her have little ground to stand on when accusing others of undermining elections.
