By: David French – nationalreview.com – November 19, 2018

Claims to the contrary wrongly undermine faith in our elections.
When is it acceptable to question the legitimacy of an American election outcome? The proper answer is “almost never.” Or, more precisely, never do it without overwhelming evidence of fraud or misconduct that’s substantial enough to alter the outcome of the election. The person claiming decisive fraud or vote suppression bears a heavy burden of proof. Any other standard risks contributing to an already-toxic political environment that is leaving all too many voters paranoid and susceptible to believing unverified and inflammatory conspiracy theories.

Applying this standard, it’s past time for Democrats to dial back their rhetoric about the Georgia gubernatorial election. It was reckless for Hillary Clinton to declare that “if [Stacey Abrams] had a fair election, she already would have won.” It was absurd for both Cory Booker and Sherrod Brown to say the election was “stolen.” Indeed, this claim is rapidly becoming conventional wisdom in parts of the Left. In the words of The Nation’s Joan Walsh, they believe the “system was rigged against her.”

Abrams lost her race by more than 54,000 votes. That’s a gap far outside the margin of fraud or suppression. Yet she fed the narrative that there was something fundamentally wrong with the election, asserting in her speech acknowledging the election results that “this is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true, or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.” Instead, she was ending her race simply because her “assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy.”

“Democracy failed Georgia,” she said. She was wrong.

If Georgia’s Brian Kemp is a vote suppressor, he’s the least successful vote suppressor alive. Turnout in Georgia was immense. In the previous gubernatorial election, Republican Nathan Deal won with 1.3 million votes. In November, Abrams lost with 1.9 million votes. There were roughly 2.5 million total votes cast in 2014. In 2018, more than 3.9 million Georgians voted. That almost matches the total votes cast for president in 2016.

According to FiveThirtyEight, 55 percent of eligible Georgians voted, a whopping 21-point increase over the 1982–2014 midterm average. Moreover, according to preliminary exit polls, a record-high 40 percent of Georgia’s electorate was nonwhite. Georgia’s 55 percent turnout exceeded the national average of 47 percent.

Given this reality, Abrams’s unprovable argument is that turnout would have been even more immense absent Kemp’s nefarious actions. But her real beef is with Georgia state law and even with her own Democratic allies, not with Kemp himself. The case against Kemp largely falls apart under scrutiny.

What is that case? This viral tweet from Mother Jones’s Ari Berman states it succinctly:

Ari Berman ✔
@AriBerman
1.5 million purged by Brian Kemp
53k registrations on hold
4.5 hour lines
214 polling places closed
Dems falsely accused of cyber crimes
Candidate overseeing own election
As @staceyabrams said, GA race was tainted by voter suppressionhttps://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/brian-kemps-win-in-georgia-tainted-by-voter-suppression-stacey-abrams/ …
4:38 PM – Nov 16, 2018

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/brian-kemps-win-in-georgia-tainted-by-voter-suppression-stacey-abrams/

Is that what happened? Is Brian Kemp responsible for disenfranchising that many people?

Well, no. In his role as secretary of state, he applied state laws that, in fact, don’t truly disenfranchise any eligible voter. Many of the 1.5 million voters “purged” were removed from the voter registration lists because they moved or died. Many others were removed under the state’s so-called “use it or lose it” law. The law was passed by a Democratic legislature and signed by a Democratic governor. Under it, voters who have no contact with the electoral system for three years are mailed a notice and given 30 days to respond. If they don’t respond and don’t vote for two more general elections, they are purged from the rolls.

But even if purged, voters can reregister, including by using Georgia’s online registration system.

Again, it’s important to note that this process is mandated by a state law created by Democrats. [ . . . ]

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Source: Georgia Governor-elect Brian Kemp Did Not Steal His Election