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Stacey Abrams, the founder of Fair Fight, said on Sunday Democrats felt a “great urgency” around the two Georgia polls on Tuesday, which will determine the balance of power in the Senate when President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
“We did very well in the postal ballot, we did very well in the early vote, but we know that polling day is likely to be the day when the turnout is high for Republicans, so we need to Democrats who did not vote, ”Abrams told Martha Raddatz, co-host of“ This Week ”.
Recent polls show close races between Republican Senator David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff in their second round and between GOP Senator Kelly Loeffler and Reverend Raphael Warnock in the special election. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has appointed Loeffler to replace former Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired at the end of 2019.
The races drew national attention, with both parties mobilizing their supporters. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will campaign in Savannah, Ga., Later Sunday. President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden will be perplexed in the state on Monday, with Biden campaigning in Atlanta and Trump headlining a rally in Dalton.
Over 3 million Georgians voted early, a record for the second round of elections in Peach State. And, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 76,000 people have registered to vote between the November general election deadline and the run-off deadline. Abrams said they were “very sure” that most of them were Democrats based on demographics.
“We have not stopped reaching these voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new registrations have taken place,” she said. “We know that at least 100,000 people who did not vote in the general election are now voting in this election.”
Raddatz pressured Abrams to have Biden outclass Democratic Senate candidates in the general election and asked if she thought it was because Biden’s victory was more about discontent with President Donald Trump. Abrams attributed the difference to voters’ familiarity with Biden.
“Joe Biden has been in American politics for over 40 years. And so for a number of new voters, they will only vote when they are confident in themselves,” she said. “That’s why we’ve spent this time for the past nine weeks educating voters about Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.”
“They have crisscrossed the state and we think that we have closed that distance and that the voters who come forward know them now and they are standing by their side and voting for them,” she added.
Abrams also said recent actions by Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, blocking $ 2,000 stimulus checks, convinced Democratic voters of the importance of this election.
Breaking away from the Republican Party’s budget conservatism, Loeffler and Perdue backed Trump’s call for $ 2,000 stimulus checks, like most Democrats. Both Democratic challengers criticized them for changing their positions.
“The hypocritical idea that it’s okay to support business but not support government business, the business of serving the people, really galvanized voters. They are feeling the very real consequences of COVID-19 here in Georgia, ”she said.
Since his loss in the 2018 parliamentary election to Kemp, Abrams has launched Fair Fight to fight voter repression and encourage voter turnout. In the 2020 general election, the Fair Fight and The New Georgia Project helped register hundreds of thousands of voters in the state.
When Raddatz pressed Abrams on some comparisons between his refusal to concede in 2018 to Kemp and Trump’s rhetoric about the 2020 election, Abrams said it was like comparing “apples and bowling balls.”
Abrams alleged the suppression of voters following his loss to Kemp in 2018, who was then Georgia’s secretary of state. She pointed to the aggressive purging of voters lists, long queues and faulty machines at polling stations and the state preventing voters from registering as signs of voter suppression in her election.
“I pointed out that there were a series of measures taken that hampered the ability of voters to vote,” Abrams said Sunday on “This Week”. “And in almost every one of those circumstances, the courts have accepted, as has the state legislature.”
“In contrast, President Trump has lost every one of his challenges in the state of Georgia and he has no proof,” she added. “An audit – the fourth, I think, of this election – found that there was no fraud in our signature matching process. One person accidentally – or inadvertently – signed for her husband against the rules, but if not, we know the signatures match and the process is working. “
Raddatz asked if Trump continuing to promote unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud could hurt Republicans in the runoff, for example, by lowering the turnout.
“I think it’s always dangerous to undermine the integrity of elections without proof,” Abrams said. “When we challenged the suppression of voters, we were able to prove it.”
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