Posted on June 11, 2019

The Stacey Abrams Myth Becomes the Democratic Catechism

Jonathan S. Tobin, National Review, June 9, 2019

Stacey Abrams’s refusal to lose the Georgia gubernatorial election graciously was one of the low points of the 2018 midterms. But her insistence that Brian Kemp and the Republicans stole the election from her has now become an article of faith among Democrats.

{snip} In rote fashion, [Democratic presidential contenders] repeated Abrams’s charges that the outcome was determined by “voter suppression” conducted by Kemp, who during the race was Georgia’s secretary of state.

South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg termed the alleged suppression “racially motivated” in his remarks to the group. {snip}

{snip} Describing the GOP’s policies as a “methodical assault” on voting rights, Biden said, “voter suppression is the reason why Stacey Abrams isn’t governor right now.”

The assertion that Abrams was cheated, like any legend, gains credibility the more it is told, and now that the presidential field is echoing the sore loser’s refrain, it is becoming harder and harder to contain. Indeed, in none of the accounts of Buttigieg and Biden’s speeches were their claims about cheating or suppression explained, let alone challenged.

{snip}

The claims of voter suppression rest primarily on the fact that as Georgia secretary of state, Kemp enforced a statute passed by a Democratic-majority legislature and signed by a Democratic governor in 1997. It required the voting rolls to be periodically purged to remove names of voters who were dead, or who had moved away or were incarcerated. Under this law, 600,000 names of people who hadn’t voted in the last three elections were removed from the rolls in 2017 by Kemp’s office.

Those who were removed got prior notification in the mail about the impending purge, and they were given a menu of options to retain their registration. Moreover, it took four years to complete the process by which a name was removed. The reason so many names were taken off in 2017 was that a lawsuit by the Georgia NAACP had delayed the routine enforcement of the law for years before the organization eventually lost in the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you assume that most of the 600,000 were Democrats who were denied the right to vote — rather than voters who were deceased or who had moved or been jailed — that gives credibility to Abrams’s story. But there aren’t many people stepping forward since November 2018 to say they were wrongfully removed from the rolls, let alone the tens or hundreds of thousands necessary to substantiate Abrams’s claim that the election was stolen.

The other argument that purportedly backs up the stolen-election claim is that lengthy lines caused by the closing of 212 precincts in the state since 2012 deterred Georgia voters from turning out. But Kemp had nothing to do with that, since all decisions on consolidating voting stations were made by county officials. Which means if there were fewer precincts and longer lines in Democratic-majority counties in Georgia, it was almost certainly due to the decisions made by local Democrats, not Kemp or a national GOP conspiracy.

When examined soberly, Abrams’s claims evaporate. Kemp’s win was no landslide, but his 1.4 percent margin of victory didn’t even give her the right to demand a legal recount. {snip}

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Abrams has damaged her cause with repeated statements both before and after the midterms that can be interpreted as favoring voting rights for non-citizens. That reinforces Republican suspicions that Democratic opposition to voter-integrity laws is rooted in a desire to commit fraud.

{snip}