Stacey Abrams Brags She Has 1.2 Million Absentee Ballots for Ga. Runoff
Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, now the founder of the voting rights organization Fair Fight, said that Democrats are prepared to win the Senate runoff race in January, and that 1.2 million absentee ballots have already been requested.
"We know from the numbers that we’re in a good place; 1.2 million absentee ballots have been requested thus far," Abrams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "Just to put that into context, 1.3 million were requested for all of the general election."
Further, Abrams said, "85,000 of those applications are from voters who did not vote in the general election, and they are disproportionately between the ages of 18 and 29 and disproportionately people of color."
Abrams' claim speaks directly to Republican fears about the Georgia vote. President Donald Trump warned at a large rally in Valdosta, Georgia, earlier this month that Democrats are "going to try to rig this election too."
He urged Republicans must "go vote and vote early starting Dec. 14 – you have to do it – they cheated and they rigged this presidential election, but we will still win.
Georgia's House Majority Leader Jon Burns earlier this month submitted a letter signed by more than 100 current and newly elected House Republicansto Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the State Election Board to review the state's absentee ballot verification process.
In the letter, Burns said that many Georgians, including his colleagues, have "serious concerns" about the state's elections and must have confidence in the progress for the Senate runoffs and future elections.
The House members want Raffensperger to implement a more "robust verification process" for reviewing signatures on absentee ballot applications and mail-in ballot envelopes that will include independent observers.
The runoff, set for Jan. 5, pits incumbent GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, against Democrat challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, respectively.
Democrats are prepared to win the races, Abrams added, because "this is the first run-off where we have the level of investment and engagement that it takes to win."
Meanwhile, Abrams said she refuses to give Gov. Brian Kemp, who has come under fire from Trump for refusing to overturn the November presidential election results, any credit for standing up to the president.
"You shouldn't have to get credit for doing your job," said Abrams, who ran and lost against Kemp in 2018. "The reality is that (Secretary of State) Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp are doing the jobs they were elected to do, and they're following the laws of the land."
Abrams also claimed that Georgia's Republican senators have said that they intend to restrain and to repeal "so many of the pieces of voter suppression mitigation that we have been able to achieve."
"They want to make it harder to vote by absentee ballot," she said. "They want to make it harder for people to access the right to vote. And so I'm going to judge Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger by what they do in January. Do they stand up not only for the rule of law, but for the five million voters who made their voices heard in the general election?"
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