On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that Georgia’s election results cannot be certified unless each of the state’s 159 counties confirms that their vote tallies include absentee ballots for which the voter’s birth date is missing or incorrect. This follows a ruling made the day before by another federal judge who ruled that election officials in Gwinnett County, Georgia’s second most populous county, could not reject absentee ballots just because the voter’s birth year is missing or wrong. This is excellent news for gubernatorial candidate Democrat Stacey Abrams who continues to close the gap in votes and move toward a runoff with Republican Brian Kemp.
According to Abrams’s campaign manager, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams needs less than 18,000 votes for a runoff and even less for a recount.
Meanwhile, Brian Kemp continues to believe that he’s won the race and his campaign is suggesting Democrats are engaging in fraud to steal the election. According to NBC News, Kemp claims that he maintains an insurmountable lead in the race and called for Abrams to concede again on Wednesday.
Kemp's campaign, which has repeatedly called on Abrams to concede, repeated that call Wednesday, saying Abrams and her supporters have used "fake vote totals," ''desperate press conferences" and "dangerous lawsuits" to try to steal the election.
"After all of the theatrics, the math remains the same," Kemp campaign spokesman Cody Hall said in an email. "Abrams lost and Brian Kemp won. This election is over."
Brian Kemp would know what it looks like to steal an election. After all, he so desperately tried to do so with this one. In a recent press conference at the Georgia Capitol, Groh-Wargo said, "We believe that Brian Kemp mismanaged this election to sway it in his favor.” And mismanage it he did. As the secretary of state, he spent years purging voters from the rolls, ignoring the state of the voter registration system and aging voting machines and then provided no guidance to counties about how to properly certify elections results in an election he was running for. And now it’s coming back to bite him in the ass. Not only are Georgia Democrats saying that a Kemp victory would be illegitimate, prominent national Democrats are as well.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said Wednesday that if Abrams loses it's because Republicans stole the election.
"If Stacey Abrams doesn't win in Georgia, they stole it. I say that publicly, it's clear.”
Currently, it seems as if there is no clarity about when the election results will be certified. State law requires it to be completed by November 20 and though some states are already close to certifying, the latest judges’ orders may extend that deadline. Either way, Kemp’s victory is looking much less clear than it did on Election Night and we can be sure that Democrats won’t rest until every vote is counted. It’s undeniable that Stacey Abrams won more votes than Brian Kemp wants us to believe. In fact, she’s likely the outright winner of the race—but we know that Republicans weren’t going to let that happen without lies and tricks.
Here’s hoping that counties do the right thing, the thing they’ve been court ordered to do, and get those absentee ballots counted quickly. Georgia voters deserve to know that their votes count and need to be prepared for a runoff, should it occur, on December 4. Maybe this time with someone else in charge of the secretary of state’s office, they can be assured of a fair and unbiased election.