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In Florida, Democrat Andrew Gillum has preached to supporters from across the state. Throughout the week, Stacey Abrams, his Georgian counterpart, launched new ads with the same request.
Gillum and Abrams lost their respective races for governor. But their message, as the stories and trials end, should continue and, with a majority of the Democratic House headed to Washington, intensify before the next presidential cycle.
Emboldened by their mid-term successes and enraged by the election process in Florida and Georgia, Democrats are now claiming what many supporters of the left see as an existential struggle for the right to vote across the country. Court rulings in recent days, as Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, struggled to expand the scope of the recount and Abrams continued to increase the number of ballots, are likely to shape future campaigns in Republican states with restrictive voting laws.
The returns to date have offered the party a new reason for hope – and lingering concern. Faced with a succession of quick court challenges, the judges refused to remove or revoke laws that, according to the Democrats, were designed to deprive minorities and the poor of their rights. But the courts were also willing to offer relief to the closely affected electoral groups, such as the thousands of people blocked by the Florida "Florida Signing" law, who had a few more days to clear their ballots.
Let America Vote, the non-profit organization launched by former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, was frustrated with the results, but she was pleased to see the sun rising on the process.
"What this really has highlighted is that there is probably a group of people in Florida who were deprived of the right to vote in previous elections and who did not even know it," he said. said Abe Rakov, president of Let America Vote, CNN. "But now that the elections are so tight and people are making sure that every eligible vote is counted, it is highlighted."
After pulling out his franchise the night of the election last weekend, Gillum, Fla., Has well understood the message in both interviews with national liberal media and supporters across the state.
Tuesday night at St. Mark AME Church in Orlando, Gillum, whose mayor's term in Tallahassee ends next week, laid the groundwork for ongoing recount efforts – and his willingness to find and count every valid vote – in historical terms.
"We need to demand a more perfect union, we need to demand a fairer process," Gillum said. "We must reject the belief that a signature difference is sufficient for the entire voice of someone to be rejected.We must get rid of these arbitrary deadlines."
The messages around the fight worked.
Nelson's storytelling efforts raised $ 2.5 million from a series of e-mails sent by leading Democratic legislators. Republican Gov. Rick Scott, his challenger and tight race leader, reported only $ 1.4 million over the same period. The spread has also confirmed for Democratic leaders that their much vaunted small dollar donor base remains excited and ready to spend on candidates ready to fight – even when the odds are against them.
Gillum refused to concede his race on Thursday despite the completion – in all but one county – of a recount that confirmed Republican leader Ron DeSantis' advance. In a statement, Gillum pointed out that the two failures of some countries, which provide updated results and arguments advanced by Democrats in court, were his reason for continuing.
"Voters need to know that their decision to participate in this election and every election is important," he said. "This is not over before every legally cast vote is counted."
Gillum finally offered his concession Saturday night.
Abrams also launched a new round of vicious accusations against his GOP rival, former Secretary of State Brian Kemp, claiming that under his watch, "democracy had failed in Georgia".
"Georgia still has a decision to make as to who will be us in the next election, and which one will follow, and which one will follow," said Abrams, looking to the future. "So we used this election and its consequences to diagnose what was broken in our process."
Democrats worry that a vigorous and well-funded fight following these contentious elections in 2018 will encourage President Donald Trump and his loyal elected officials, such as Kemp, who for nearly a decade and a half will not be able to do so. a decade as election officials in Georgia, helped set up the rules a governor contest, it would be both in and supervise.
Trump is a good bet, if his first campaign announced it, to use a similar tactic in the run-up to the 2020 elections and, possibly, as a result of these. The conspiratorial commentary on the Florida election was so easily adopted by Scott, who was previously shy as a shy man, – who had been reprimanded by a federal judge for "crossing" the dividing line between rhetoric Reckless electoral campaign and problematic action of the state "- by voting rights advocates as a sign of things to come.
"It's President Trump who is setting the stage for 2020, to make sure his supporters will question election results if he does not win," Rakov said. . "He uses this situation to outdo himself – he does not care about having another senator in Washington, he only wants people to start understanding that the election results are not real."
On Wednesday, Florida's trump and Republican representatives, Matt Gaetz, one of his most fervent followers of Capitol Hill, took turns trying to feed the fear of Democratic efforts in Florida.
The president sent a fundraising e-mail with a subject line called "VOTE OF NON-CITIZENS?" and an assertion below that "the Democrats are trying to overthrow our Republican victories in Florida."
In an interview with Breitbart, Gaetz claimed that the ongoing court challenges before Nelson were the precursor to a presidential robbery.
"If Democrats can now know what techniques work and do not work, what transparency laws are going to be followed and what laws are not, it gives them a roadmap on how to steal Donald Trump's election in 2020. ", did he declare.
In an interview after Gaetz's comments began to spread, Maryland's Democratic Representative, John Sarbanes, emphasizing that new legislation developed by the Democrats in the House, offered a more mundane explanation.
"What we are trying to do is create a roadmap on how to protect people's vote and voice everywhere in this country," Sarbanes said. "If we can learn something by remedying these shortcomings in our voting process (in Florida) and our voting system in this country, you are writing a manual not to steal elections, but to ensure that elections accurately reflect the will and the voice of the people. "
Sarbanes and other Democrats will present a host of "democratic reforms" to launch the new Congress. Automatic voter registration is one of the key elements that would add eligible voters to the lists unless they chose not to participate.
With Republicans increasing their majority in the Senate, the measure supported by the Democrats is a near-lock that will disappear once it reaches the upper house. Sarbanes understands the calculations, but hopes that the optics will trigger a reaction back against the Senate GOP and possibly against the president.
"If you arrive with a powerful statement and big bang, the fact that Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate ignores it only makes the contrast even clearer," said Sarbanes.
The argument with the voters, he added, was: "You gave us the hammer in the House and we showed you that we are attached to these things." Give us the hammer in the Senate and we'll do it there, give us a pen to the White House and we'll do it there. "
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