A day after declaring victory in a race that hasn’t been officially settled, Republican Brian Kemp resigned as Georgia Secretary of State Thursday noting that he’s burned enough votes to ensure that he will be the next governor of Georgia.
Kemp, aka the wizard of voter suppression, said he could finally resign because his true work of punching the black vote in the face was complete. Oh, and he wanted to work on his transition team now that he’d successfully made sure mostly-black areas had one voting machine with a three-inch plug.
“In addition to having the right team, you need energy and focus,” Kemp said at a news conference in Atlanta, NBC News reports. “That is why effective 11:59 a.m. today, I’m stepping down as secretary of state.”
According to NBC News, Kemp holds a slight lead over Stacey Abrams, but the race remains too close to call. Current numbers have Kemp leading Abrams 50.3 percent to 48.7 percent.
Kemp knows the race is his because he stole all the votes, according to his calculations, “even if Abrams received ‘100 percent’ of the remaining provisional ballots, he would still come out on top.”
“The votes are not there for her,” Kemp told NBC News. “I certainly respect the hard fought race that she ran. But that’s a decision she’s gonna have to make. But we’ve run the race, it’s very clear now and we’re moving forward with the transition.”
NBC News notes that as more ballots are being counted for Abrams, the closer the race becomes, the more likely this fiasco is headed for a runoff election.
Abrams’ campaign believes there are enough outstanding votes - excluding the votes stuffed inside a crushed Honda Civic trunk - to force a runoff.
“If Abrams is able to gain slightly more than 23,700 votes on Kemp, the race is pushed into a mandatory recount. If she can gain about 25,600, it is forced into a runoff,” NBC News notes.
So now we wait in the hopes that the 30,000 votes buried in Kemp’s backyard are somehow discovered. Fine. The Root has no proof Kemp has hidden votes in his backyard.