Georgia Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams backed off from her gubernatorial campaign, but she’s taking shots at Governor-elect Brian Kemp. CNN host Jake Tapper asked her Sunday if she thought the winner was “legitimate,” and she only called him the “legal governor of the state of Georgia,” and the “legal victor.”
“But what you are looking for me to say is that there was no compromise of our democracy, and that there should be some political compromise in the language I use, and that’s not right,” she said. “What’s not right is saying something was done properly, when it was not.” She said that she refused to say that this election was not “tainted” or that thousands of people weren’t disenfranchised.
Kemp, a Republican who resigned as Georgia’s Secretary of State after the election, faced multiple claims of voter suppression. He has butted heads with critics and plaintiffs for refusing to recuse himself, and for his overall handling of the local election system. Abrams said there was a “deliberate and intentional disinvestment and I think destruction of the administration of elections in the state of Georgia.” Kemp has called the voter suppression allegations a “farce.”
Tapper asked Abrams what made her claims of voter suppression different from President Donald Trump‘s unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in the Florida recount. She pointed to recent court rulings in a week that determined that “what we witnessed” was wrong.
Kemp is expected to take office in January. As Secretary of State, his office faced allegations of incorrectly flagging voters as non-citizens. A judge ruled for Georgia officials to stop tossing voter applications and absentee ballots for apparently mismatched signatures. His office announced on Nov. 4 that they were investigating the state Democratic Party for “possible cyber crimes,” but the Party dismissed the allegation.
[Screengrab via State of the Union]
