A high-profile politician sows the seeds of doubt about an election, refusing to concede and embarking on a months-long campaign with the aid of friendly media and party officials, to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy.
No, not President Trump. It’s Democrat Stacey Abrams.
During the 2016 election, Trump caused a stir when asked by Chris Wallace if he’d accept the results of the election. Trump responded, “I will look at it at the time.” Hillary Clinton rightly castigated Trump, saying, “That is not the way our democracy works. We’ve been around 240 years and have had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. He is denigrating; he is talking down our democracy. And I, for one, am appalled.”
As it turned out, a fellow Democrat was the one who needed to heed Clinton’s words. Following her defeat to Brian Kemp in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, Abrams did what Clinton argued should never happen. She refused, and continues to refuse, to concede and accept the results.
Instead, she weaved a tale of supposed voter suppression that cost her the win. “I will not concede because the erosion of our democracy is not right,” she said defiantly after officially ending her campaign.
Kemp won the election with 50.2% of the vote to Abrams’ 48.8%, a difference of approximately 54,000 votes. The margin was enough to avoid a runoff. If Abrams’ refusal to accept defeat was the final mention of the race, the controversy might have faded. But she was just getting started.
Abrams toured the state starting in 2019, giving speeches where she’d audaciously say, “I’m gonna tell you what I’ve told folks across this state, and this is not a partisan statement, it’s a true statement: We won.”
She has plenty of enablers: 2020 Democratic presidential candidates upped the ante in her name. California Sen. Kamala Harris said, “Let’s say this loud and clear: Without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia.” South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg also blamed voter suppression, claiming Abrams “ought to be the governor of Georgia.” Joe Biden got in on the act as well. “Voter suppression is the reason Stacey Abrams isn’t governor right now,” he said.
And what about the liberal talking heads, pundits, and commentariat who were agog at Trump’s comments at the 2016 debate? What did they make of Abrams’ claims and those of her defenders? It ranged from either silence or tacit support to unconditional support, hailing her as a real fighter for voting rights. Long gone were the lamentations about candidates accepting the outcome of an election.
Worse yet is the treatment that Abrams receives from the press, which borders on adulation. An August profile in Vogue is titled, “Can Stacey Abrams Save American Democracy?” Another in the New Yorker says, “Stacey Abrams’s Fight for a Fair Vote.” The press is hailing Abrams as a modern-day Susan B. Anthony, repeating her accusations of voter suppression with almost zero examination of the facts. If they did, they’d find her claims unworthy of anything but the far reaches of the internet fever swamps.
Abrams delivered the Democratic response to the State of the Union address and said, “Voter suppression is real.” One example of it, she said, is making it harder to register to vote. Georgia, however, is one of the most accessible states in which to register. Voters can register online, print the forms online, or pick up a form at the local county registrar’s office. They can also get forms at the public library, the post office, or almost any other government building. College students can get a registration form at their school registrar’s office. A recent survey report by the United States Election Assistance Commission showed nearly 3.6 million people registered to vote or updated their information through the Georgia Department of Driver Services from October 2016 to October 2018. Almost 700,000 of those were new or first-time registrants.
Abrams also said it’s harder to stay on the voter rolls. Georgia is one of nine states where citizens can get removed from the voter registration list for not voting in past elections. It’s often referred to in the press with the sinister-sounding, “voter purge.” It’s merely a way to ensure data integrity. Democrats are so concerned about Russian interference but only focus on voting machine security. Voting machines aren’t attached to a central database, but voter registration is, and it is subject to hacking and manipulation. The “use or lose it” laws make sense, primarily since voter registration is vulnerable to bad actors. I lived in Georgia for five years, and I moved to Texas in 2017. Despite the move, at the time of the 2018 midterm elections, my registration in Georgia still showed as “active.” It now shows as “inactive” (that status does not mean one cannot vote), but the state is not “suppressing” my voting rights by making the status inactive and then removing my registration entirely following another election cycle.
Abrams and her allies accused Kemp of “closing over 200 polling stations across Georgia” as a means of suppressing minority votes. Kemp, in his role as secretary of state, had zero authority to make those decisions. Counties make those decisions, and the closures had more to do with saving money by consolidating voting precincts, particularly in light of more people taking advantage of early voting.
Minority turnout also throws cold water on suppression conspiracy theories. Voter turnout among Georgia minorities reached an all-time high of 40% in 2018, including 30% represented by black voters. In 1994, minority turnout was a mere 18%.
If Georgia Republicans are attempting to suppress minority voters, it’s one of the most inept and ineffective efforts in electoral history.
But that hasn’t stopped Abrams from continuing to deny reality. During an appearance on CBS This Morning on Aug. 19, she still wouldn’t concede. She said doing so would acknowledge the process is “fair,” and “I am complicit if I say that that system is fair.” Abrams’ rhetoric didn’t sound all that different from mid-October 2016 when then-candidate Trump claimed the election was “rigged” in favor of Clinton.
People say, “Trump didn’t have any evidence.” Neither did Abrams, and she said so herself in an April interview with the New York Times, aptly but absurdly titled, “Why Stacey Abrams Is Still Saying She Won.” Abrams said, “I have no empirical evidence that I would have achieved a higher number of votes.”
Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, while giving the nod to “suppressive effects,” said, “I have seen no good evidence that the suppressive effects of strict voting and registration laws affected the outcome of the governor’s races in Georgia and Florida.”
At a time when we know Russia is doing all it can to undermine the confidence Americans have in the electoral process, it’s appalling that, rather than lambasting Abrams for her refusal to accept election results, media have rolled out the red carpet for her.
Abrams came close to achieving a historic victory in Georgia and could have used it to help build out a Democratic blueprint to win future statewide elections. Instead, she chose to embrace the worst elements of partisanship in a cynical effort to convince people she was the victim of an unfair system.
It won’t get Abrams any closer to the governor’s mansion, but it’s sure to add more seeds of doubt to the public’s faith in our elections.
Jay Caruso is a deputy editor for the Washington Examiner Magazine.
