As a pair of federal judges issued rulings to force the counting of provisional and absentee ballots in the race for Governor in Georgia, Democrats in the Congress demanded a full count in the state, accusing Republican Brian Kemp of being worried about tallying all the votes in his race against Democrat Stacey Abrams.
“In Georgia, every vote should be counted,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). “And that is how our candidate can have a fair shot.”
Appearing at a Capitol Hill event of the National Action Network, a civil rights group run by Rev. Al Sharpton, Klobuchar teed off on Kemp, accusing him of holding up voter registration of thousands of Georgia residents, and doing all he could to trip up Democratic voters.
“When every vote is counted, then it’s right,” said Klobuchar, who has been mentioned frequently as a candidate for President in 2020.
A few hundred more votes just came in and the margin in the race for governor remains the same. @staceyabrams still needs to net 20k+ votes to force a runoff. We should get provisional ballots from DeKalb & Gwinnett later today - two heavily D counties. #gapol pic.twitter.com/6A5u5OD1VR
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) November 13, 2018
The latest numbers in the race for Governor continued to keep Kemp just above the 50 percent majority that he needs to avoid a runoff, as Democrats held out hope that uncounted ballots could close the gap for Abrams.
“What we’ve seen in Florida, and especially in Georgia, has been a national disgrace,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), joining Klobuchar in accusing Republicans of doing all they could to suppress the votes of Democrats.
“Every vote matters, period,” said Warren, who is also talked about as a Presidential hopeful.
“Politicians are supposed to compete over how many voters they can persuade to vote for them,” Warren added. “Not how many American citizens they can disqualify, discourage or demoralize.”
Meanwhile, Georgia’s vote fight in the race for Governor was increasingly being fought out in the courts, as a federal judge on Monday ruled that Gwinnett County must count absentee ballots which had been thrown out on technical grounds.
I believe that there have been an unusually large number of rejected absentee ballots in Gwinnett due to a poorly designed absentee ballot return envelope that mixes English and Spanish https://t.co/NWnQk7VSLR
— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 13, 2018
“I’ve been concerned about the unusually high number of absentee ballots rejected by Gwinnett County for failure of voters to provide their year of birth,” said elections expert Michael McDonald. “A court has ordered Gwinnett to count these ballots.”
WPXI