Stacey Abrams: Georgia officials 'grossly mismanaged' election system, says lawsuit backed by Democratic candidate

Democrat was seeking to become nation's first black woman governor

The constitutional rights of Georgia voters were violated this month by a system overseen by the man who won the governors’ race, a lawsuit backed by Stacey Abrams has claimed.

The lawsuit filed by a group supporting the woman who narrowly lost the race to Republican Brian Kemp, claims the election’s conduct “deprived Georgia citizens, and particularly citizens of colour, of their fundamental right to vote”.

While it does not seek to overturn the result, the lawsuit filed by the group Fair Fight Action, calls on the courts to stop state election officials cancelling voter registrations of those who have not voted in recent elections, guarantee adequate equipment to reduce the need to wait in line for hours, and to make use paper ballots to ensure the accuracy of elections.

“This lawsuit is going to demonstrate, and prove in court, that the constitutional rights of Georgians were trampled in the 2018 elections,” Ms Abrams’s campaign manager, Lauren Groh-Wargo, said in Atlanta.

Earlier this month, Ms Abrams, 44, a former Democratic leader in the Georgia legislature, ended her effort to become the nation’s first African American female governor, after a final tally showed Mr Kemp with a 50.2 – 48.8 advantage.

In a speech to supporters, she said she was not formally conceding, because she did not believe the election had been fair.

“I acknowledge that former of secretary of state Brian Kemp will be certified the victor in the 2018 gubernatorial election,” she said. “But to watch an elected official, who claims to represent the people in the state, baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been truly appalling.”

She added: “Concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.”

Ms Abrams, who in that speech mentioned her plan to push for the lawsuit that was filed this week, had claimed there was an effort to suppress turnout among minority voters, who were more likely to support her.

She said Mr Kemp, in his role as Georgia’s secretary of state, was overseeing the system and called on him to resign from that post. He refused to do so.

Among those who commented on his refusal were Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who said on Twitter: “In Georgia, in order to try to win the election there, cowardly Republicans are blatantly suppressing the vote and denying many African Americans the right to participate in the election.”

The complaint, filed this week in the US District Court, cited issues from sweeping purges of the voter rolls to shuttered precincts, voting equipment failures and late absentee ballots.

It also highlighted stories of voters who said they were turned away from polls under state requirements that their personal information on voter applications match state databases exactly – the so-called “exact match” policy that Ms Abrams said was enforced too strictly.

It also said black and minority voters were disproportionately disenfranchised, and that 70 per cent of the voters whose registrations were pending over the “exact match” policy before the election were black. This was despite black people representing only one-third of the state’s population.

The main defendant in the lawsuit is Georgia’s interim secretary of state, Robyn Crittenden. Reuters said his spokeswoman, Candice Broce, said on Tuesday: “Along with thousands of local elections and registration officials across our state, we remain committed to secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters.”

Mr Kemp’s spokesman Ryan Mahoney, said the governor-elect was “focused on building a safe and prosperous future for Georgia families”.