It's Election Day in Georgia and the Republican U.S. Senate majority is hanging in the balance.
During an interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow Monday night, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams bragged about a lack of "exact signature matching" on ballots.
"We were able to secure absentee ballot rules that actually treated every single voter the same. We were able to mitigate and eviscerate the exact match system that was keeping so many people off the rolls," Abrams said.
"They are two of the most egregious voter suppressors in the country." - Stacey Abrams sets the record straight on Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger pic.twitter.com/0ZxlNEYHnM
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 5, 2021
Meanwhile, Abrams' sister, U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, is refusing to recuse herself from election cases in the state. She's also allowed thousands of questionable and possibly ineligible voters to cast ballots in the Senate runoff elections Tuesday.
A federal judge has agreed to allow a Georgia county to require that certain voters cast provisional ballots, just days before two runoff elections in the state that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.
More than 4,000 voters faced eligibility challenges ahead of the Jan. 5 runoffs based on unverified postal change-of-address records. The new injunction from U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, issued just before midnight on Wednesday, replaces an earlier restraining order she had issued that prevented Muscogee County from forcing those voters to cast provisional ballots at all. The latest order represents a significant move in the direction the county board urged during a court hearing earlier Wednesday.
Although the county may now require provisional ballots from those voters, Gardner’s order directs that no challenges to their eligibility be upheld based exclusively on data in the National Change of Address Registry.
“The challenge to their eligibility will not be sustained absent specific evidence of ineligibility,” ordered Gardner, who sits in Albany, Ga. “Such specific evidence shall not include the appearance of a voter’s name or other information on the NCOA registry.”