For Stacey Abrams, Georgia being blue is her one and only goal. Abrams was the 2018 gubernatorial candidate and has donated years to increasing voter turnout in all communities. In the 2018 race for Georgia governor, Abrams ran against Brian Kemp in a close race. Kemp beat Abrams by 55,000 votes but this election was quickly disfigured by vote suppression allegations. The question is, could these alleged voter suppression allegations have made a difference in the election?
The claims suggested that there may have been racially motivated voter suppression happening in the state of Georgia. According to the Washington Post, Kemp was “directly responsible for overseeing the voting because he retained his post of secretary of state while he sought the governorship.” For the weeks leading up to election day, the Abrams team was very suspicious of Kemp’s actions. Kemp refused to surrender his duties of overseeing the election, which made his team’s actions seem malicious to Abrams and her team. On Election Day, Kemp also accused Democrats of cybercrimes, which could have contributed to voter suppression by distracting residents from voter registration.
Kemp says, “You know the Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.” This leads voters to heavily believe that Kemp believes that minorities are associated with Democrats. Kemp faces huge allegations because of this; although, nothing can be proven.
There was a large effort to purge voters in the coming weeks of the election. About 10 percent of voters were purged based on residential requirements or prison time. Many voters, most of which were black, were placed on a registrational hold because of mistakes on their registration records. Polling places in poor and minority neighborhoods were closed. On the other hand, every provisional ballot or rejected absentee ballot has been awarded to Abrams. Also, voter turnout in 2018 was much higher than any year prior.
Hasen, a UC Irvine Expert, says, “There is no question that Georgia in general and Brian Kemp, in particular, took steps to make it harder for people to register and vote, and that those people tended to skew Democratic. I have seen no good social science evidence that efforts to make it harder to register and vote were responsible for Kemp’s victory over Abrams in the Georgia gubernatorial race. That seems to me to be beside the point: The question is whether Georgia had a good reason to put these suppressive measures in place, and for the most part, the state did not have good reasons.”
Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Youtube and Pinterest!