Stacey Abrams Slams Brian Kemp on Suppressing Vote as He Worries Too Many Georgians Will Vote

With the midterm elections less than two weeks away, we look at the governor’s race in Georgia, where Democrat Stacey Abrams is attempting to become the first black woman governor in the country. Polls show Abrams and her opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, are in a dead heat, but the race has been roiled with accusations that Kemp has used his power as secretary of state to suppress the vote. Earlier this month, Abrams called on Kemp to step down as secretary of state for placing 53,000 voter applications on hold. Seven out of 10 of the stalled applications are for AfricanAmerican voters, in a state where less than onethird of the population is black. Voting rights activists have also sued Kemp for purging voters from the rolls. On Tuesday, Rolling Stone published an audio recording of Kemp privately telling Republican donors that he was concerned about too many Georgians exercising their right to vote. Hours later, Abrams and Kemp sparred in their first debate. We speak to Leah Wright Rigueur, professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is the author of “The Loneliness of the Black RepublicanPragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power.”

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