In a speech to her supporters on Friday night, Democrat Stacey Abrams acknowledged her loss in the race to be Georgia’s next governor, officially ending her campaign as she called Republican Brian Kemp the “victor.”
Abrams isn’t conceding, however, since the election was plagued by voter suppression in Georgia, ABC News reports.
“But to watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in the state baldly pin his hopes for election on suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been truly appalling,” Abrams said at a news conference in Atlanta.
“This is not a speech of concession. Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that,” she added.
“I acknowledge that former Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be certified the victor in the 2018 gubernatorial elections,” Abrams said.
.@staceyabrams: “Movements for change are not built overnight, and they do not end when the polls close. We must continue the fight for progress…because the better, brighter Georgia we seek is always over the next hill.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/rMUrHvrUxJ
— Team Abrams (@teamabrams) November 17, 2018
According to The Huffington Post, Kemp had declared himself the winner of the gubernatorial race the day after the midterm elections, but Abrams, who would’ve been the nation’s first African-American female governor, fought for a recount, since she argued that Kemp, who oversaw the election as Georgia’s Secretary of State until he resigned on November 8, purged eligible voters from the rolls.
There were numerous stories of voting difficulties on Election Day in Georgia, including voters who were denied a ballot and turned away from the polls since they had not voted within the last three years or in the last two federal elections, and Kemp’s office had purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls due to “inactivity,’ HuffPost reports.
Voters on Election Day were also forced to wait hours in line to vote since the voting machines lacked power cords and ran out of paper and batteries.
According to The Associated Press, Kemp’s office put 53,000 voter registration applications on hold because of the state’s “exact match” law, which only considers a voter registration application complete if the information exactly matches records kept by Georgia’s Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Seventy percent of the voter registration applications that were put on hold were from people of color.
Kemp has denied any attempts of voter suppression.
“I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired effect on the electoral process in Georgia,” Abrams said.
According to ABC News, Abrams said in her speech on Friday that she will launch a group called “Fair Fight Georgia” to bring a federal lawsuit against the state for its handling of the ballots.
Meanwhile, Democrat Andrew Gillum, whose bid to become the first black governor of Florida also extended beyond Election Day, conceded the race to his Republican opponent Ron DeSantis, acknowledging his loss by a margin of just 0.41 percentage points, The Huffington Post reports.
Tight margins between the two candidates had forced an automatic machine recount. Gillum had conceded the race after the midterm elections, but had rescinded his concession as it became clear that a recount was necessary.
“We said that we would fight until the last vote is counted. We wanted to make sure that every single vote ― including those that were overvotes, undervotes ― as long as those were legally cast, we wanted those votes to be counted,” Gillum said.
“And now that we are rounding that process out, R. Jai (Gillum’s wife) and I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Mr. DeSantis for becoming the next governor of the great state of Florida,” he said.