Stacey Abrams: Republicans ‘do not know how to win without voter suppression’
'When we create access to the right to vote for eligible citizens,' Abrams told CNN, 'more people participate.'
Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the founder of Fair Fight, blasted Republicans this week for their pattern of voter suppression.
“When we create access to the right to vote for eligible citizens, more people participate,” Abrams told CNN’s Jim Sciutto in an interview Monday morning, “and Republicans do not know how to win without voter suppression as one of their tools.”
“Voter suppression is their modus operandi,” Abrams maintained. “It is not a partisan effort; it is a people effort. We will stay hard at work through Fair Fight … in Georgia and around the country to defend the right to vote and to defend access to the right to vote.”
Abrams founded Fair Fight, a Democratic advocacy group, after narrowly losing her 2018 campaign for governor of the state of Georgia. She was defeated by Republican Brian Kemp, who, at the time was its secretary of state and in charge of the election, which saw hundreds of thousands of Georgians purged from voter rolls.
In the interview, Abrams cited a challenge of more than 360,000 voters in the state by conservative advocacy group True the Vote as an example of alleged suppression. The Texas-based operation is alleging that those voters may have moved out of the state.
Abrams has filed a court challenge against True the Vote, which is also under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for possibly violating federal laws that prohibit charities from engaging in political activities.
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The watchdog group Campaign for Accountability is asking that the IRS revoke True the Vote’s tax-exempt status.
Abrams’ comments come with just one week remaining in the two pivotal Senate runoffs in the state pitting Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue against respective Democratic hopefuls Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Polls show the races are nearly tied.
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If the Democratic challengers flip both seats, the Senate will be evenly split, 50 to 50, party to party, and Vice President Kamala Harris will cast each tie-breaking vote.
That puts the Democrats in control of the White House, House of Representatives and the Senate for the first since from 2009 through 2011 — the first term of President Barack Obama.
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