Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is struggling to square allegations that Georgia passed a voter suppression measure with high turnout in the state’s primary election.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Abrams said, “The question about voter suppression and voter turnout is causation without correlation…I’m sorry. [You] make mistakes even when you know what you’re talking about. It’s correlation without causation.”
”We know that increased turnout has nothing to do with suppression,” she continued.
Finally, Abrams said, “Suppression is about whether or not you make it difficult for voters to access the ballot.”
Watch the video below:
Democrat Stacey Abrams on Georgia's skyrocketing turnout: "We know that increased turnout has nothing to do with suppression" pic.twitter.com/MzTnwNY7KK
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The law, which applies to both primary and general elections, essentially bans mobile voting centers, limits the number of drop boxes available for returning ballots — and the hours that they are accessible — and limits the time for voters to request mail-in ballots before an election.
Additionally, it implemented new voter I.D. requirements for requesting a mail-in ballot.
In January, Vice President Kamala Harris labeled the law an “anti-voter law” and stated that “many voters will likely be kept from voting.”
Meanwhile, last year, President Joe Biden called it “un-American,” an “atrocity,” “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” and finally, “a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.”
But as The Washington Post reports, “After three weeks of early voting ahead of Tuesday’s primary, record-breaking turnout is undercutting predictions that the Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021 would lead to a falloff in voting.”
“By the end of Friday, the final day of early in-person voting, nearly 800,000 Georgians had cast ballots — more than three times the number in 2018, and higher even than in 2020, a presidential year,” it added.
The Post notes, “Voting rights groups and Democrats say they have changed their strategies to mobilize voters under the new rules.”
But according to Biden and Harris, this law was supposed to deprive people of their ability to vote.
If this law was meant to suppress votes, it should be making it harder for people to vote early, and turnout should not be surging to a record level.
And yet we’ve seen the opposite for the early voting period of the primary.
Abrams’ answer is just a word salad as she desperately tries to avoid saying the criticism of the law was overblown.
