Stacey Abrams’ campaign still has the time and the energy.
Along with the Georgia Democratic Party, Abrams’ campaign has filed a federal lawsuit to get rejected absentee and provisional ballots counted for the extremely tight gubernatorial race.
Brian Kemp’s lead in the race has slowly but surely been dwindling, inching closer and closer to the below-50-percent mark that would mandate a runoff. Kemp’s campaign has claimed there aren’t enough outstanding votes for Abrams to catch up. Abrams’ team believes otherwise, given that roughly 5,000 provisional and mail-in votes have been added in Abrams’s favor.
The lawsuit challenges the rejection of more than 1,000 absentee ballots for missing information or mismatching information, like birth dates or addresses.
The lawsuit also seeks relief for voters whose provisional ballots were rejected in Gwinnett and Dekalb counties, which are in the Atlanta metro area, because they are registered in a different county.
Abrams’ campaign is pushing things to the wire, as newly-appointed Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden has asserted that counties must declare election results by Tuesday at 5 p.m per standard election process. Those filing the lawsuit hope to extend the deadline to Wednesday.
Sidebar: While I’m sure Crittenden is perfectly capable of handling this interim role as the first black woman to hold a statewide constitutional office in Georgia history, the optics of appointing a black woman right now, at the last minute, when Kemp could have long since given the duties to someone else, are… interesting! Fascinating, even. At least they threw us a different kind of first after doing all they could to sabotage Stacey’s chance at one!
While it seems the votes in question may add up to only about 9 percent of what Abrams would need to cut Kemp’s 59,000-vote lead and trigger a runoff, the action could at the very least set an important precedent in reconsidering the way we count and call elections—especially in light of looming recounts in Florida.
Count every vote, indeed.