Stacey Abrams refuses to concede hotly contested Georgia governor race: “Votes remain to be counted”

Abrams was trailing her opponent Brian Kemp by three percentage points on Tuesday night.

Nov 7, 2018

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Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has put up quite a fight against her opponent, Republican Brian Kemp. By early Wednesday morning, she was trailing Kemp 48 to 51 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting. However, she delivered a powerful speech that proved she hasn’t counted herself out of the hotly contested race.

“I want to say this: if I wasn’t your first choice or if you made no choice at all, you’re gonna have a chance to do a do-over,” she said. “Votes remain to be counted, there are voices that remain to be heard…We believe our chance for a stronger Georgia is within reach.”

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The speech came shortly after Abrams’ campaign manager told the crowd at their watch party, “More than 3.7 million Georgians have cast a ballot which is 1.2 million more than 2014. The returns are coming in slowly. Nearly all of the outstanding votes that remain to be counted are from Democratic strongholds. We also know that there are tens of thousands of absentee ballots around the state, many of them we believe are Abrams voters and they have yet to be counted as well.”

Clearly, Stacey Abrams and her team are not convinced that she has lost the race and confirmed she plans to wait until every vote is counted. This is a smart move, given the controversy behind Kemp’s refusal to recuse himself as Secretary of State or the state’s chief election officer, essentially running an election that he’s running in. As well, Abrams and others have accused Kemp of voter suppression tactics to give himself the upper hand.

In her impassioned speech, Abrams went on to say, “When you chose me as your Democratic nominee, I made you a vow,” she said. “In our Georgia, no one would be unseen, no one is unheard and no one is uninspired…Tonight, we have closed the gap between yesterday and tomorrow, but we still have a few more miles to go.”

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“Every vote’s getting counted,” she repeated. “Because I’ll tell you this in a civilized nation, the machinery of democracy should work for everyone, everywhere not just in certain places and not just on a certain day…It is my mission to serve you, to serve Georgia, to make you proud…and for those who didn’t pick me the first time, to change your mind about me and what we can accomplish together.”

If elected, Abrams would be the first Black woman Governor in the country.