Stacey Abrams claims she didn't 'challenge' 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election results

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Thursday that she didn't challenge the results of the 2018 Georgia governor's race following her loss to current Republican Brian Kemp.

During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," Abrams said that on Nov. 16, 10 days after that year's election, she "acknowledged" she would not be Georgia's next governor and that Kemp had won the election. However, she refused to officially concede, saying the election was rigged by voter suppression, and even made subsequent claims she was the true winner.

While Abrams did not mount a legal challenge to her defeat after Nov. 16, her group Fair Fight Action filed a lawsuit challenging Georgia election laws in 2019.

Left-wing host Rachel Maddow prefaced the discussion on Abram's past campaign by claiming that Kemp, who was serving as Georgia's secretary of state at the time, engaged in "voter suppression tactics" to benefit his candidacy.

She noted that Abrams had been "contentious" about the loss and claimed it wasn't "a fair fight," before asking her how she thought that such a dynamic had affected the race.

"On the 16th of November when I acknowledged that I would not become governor, that he had won the election, I did not challenge the outcome of the election unlike some recent folks did," Abrams said, seemingly referring to the legal challenges by former President Trump and Republican allies after his 2020 election defeat. "What I said was that the system was not fair, and leaders challenge systems. Leaders say we can do better. And that's what I declared."

"I could not in good conscience say that in order to protect my political future I’m going to be silent about the political present, which is that we have a system under a leader that sought to keep people from casting their ballot, that threw those ballots out, that said that voter suppression was a viable tactic for winning elections," she added.

During the 2018 campaign, Kemp had been accused, without evidence, of voter suppression tactics stemming fr... (Read more)

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