Abrams: ‘You Don’t Have the Right to Vote’ in Georgia

Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said on Thursday evening that the “right to vote” does not exist in Georgia, where she claimed people have “the opportunity to possibly think about maybe being able to participate in the right to vote.”

Abrams, who refused to concede to Brian Kemp and has been declaring to various audiences in recent months that she “won” the 2018 election, told the Democratic National Committee’s African-American Leadership Council Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, that “we will never know what could have been” because polling places were closed and voter rolls were purged.

“When 1.4 million Georgians get purged in one person’s administration, including 800,000 because they didn’t use a voluntary right, when one county can forget to send out 4,700 absentee ballots, when another county can have a rate of rejection that exceeds almost 10 percent, you don’t have the right to vote in the state of Georgia,” Abrams said. “We have the opportunity to possibly think about maybe being able to participate in the right to vote in the state of Georgia. And what we found on that day in that election is that we don’t know the truth because there wasn’t a fair fight.”

Abrams praised Democrats for talking about voter suppression weeks after signaling that she will enter the race if Democrats are not speaking about issues—like voter suppression—that she thinks will be the most important for 2020.

“And whether we have 23, 24, 25, or 150 candidates for president, we should demand from every single person an adherence to the values that we hold to be true. They must speak about voter suppression every day until every person who is legally entitled to vote has the right to vote in the United States of America,” Abrams said last month. “When we see our voters and we give them their voices, we will see the change we need in America, and we will survive for another generation.”

Abrams, who still has not closed the door on a potential 2020 presidential bid, recently paid off her IRS, student loan, and credit card debts and has said that she believes she could still win the nomination if she enters the race in the fall after the first round of debates.