The pioneer of election disinformation 

Earlier this month when she announced her candidacy for governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams said, “I did not challenge the outcome of the election, unlike some recent folks did.” That sound you hear is the world’s largest record scratch. Despite these desperate attempts to rewrite history, Stacey Abrams is the pioneer of election disinformation. 

After losing the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, Abrams was unwilling to concede to Gov.-elect Brian Kemp. The next year she said, “We had this little election back in 2018 and despite the final tally and the inauguration and the situation we find ourselves in, I do have one very affirmative statement to make: we won.” She went even further on several occasions claiming that she had won and that she was proud she hadn’t conceded.

She is changing her tune now because she knows her past statements are not only campaign fodder for her opponents, but reveals to Georgians her role in our state’s mistrust of elections.  

What should also be concerning for Georgia voters is that Abrams, according to Dan Primack of Axios, plans to remain on the board of her blank-check companies, which raised hundreds of millions after launch. Abram’s unwillingness to disaffiliate herself from her business ventures, as I and most others have done, bears careful watching of conflicts during a campaign. 

In the past, Abrams relied on lies about winning the governorship to fundraise, and her group Fair Fight Action was a large donor to the Coalition for Good Governance, a far left group that pushed disinformation about Republicans rigging elections in Georgia.

One of Abram’s most pernicious lies is that Republican voter suppression runs rampant in the Peach State. Record levels of turnout in the 2020 election among all voters and strong minority turnout haven’t stopped Abrams from peddling her fantastical charges of voter suppression.  

In reality, those committing voter suppression were on the left. I saw it up close during my own senate race. Out-of-state dark money was deployed to promote disinformation and suppress conservative voters in Georgia. Billboards and ads littered the state encouraging Republicans to stay home in the Senate race last January and contributed to more than 339,000 Republican voters in the general election — and that we had reached multiple times — doing just that.  

We saw the same tactics again after this year’s passage of SB202 — a strong bill making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. We all know what happened next: a vast Abrams-led disinformation campaign that chased the Major League Baseball All-Star Game and $100 million in revenues out of our state, in the very same year the league had planned to honor Atlanta legend Hank Aaron. Before the MLB move, Abrams had touted boycotts in a USA Today op-ed while calling Georgia’s bill “Jim Crow in a suit.” She then attempted to stealthily rewrite it to avoid blame for driving the game and the revenue out of our state. Abrams has shown that both the state of Georgia and the truth are secondary to her political goals. 

Fast forward to today, Georgia hosted the MLB World Series and is defending its election laws. But the issue of restoring faith in our elections has not disappeared, nor should it.  

During her campaign, Abrams will continue to peddle the same mistruths that she has been using to build her brand for the last four years, but the people of Georgia deserve the facts.  

Georgians need to hold both Abrams and all other Georgia officials accountable and demand honest discussions about election integrity. After the 2020 Georgia primary, it was announced that there were over a thousand instances of double voting and hundreds of investigations, yet we haven’t seen the prosecutions. Allowing fraud without consequence takes away another’s vote and voice. Election fraud is a crime, so at a time when Georgians want more law and order, a great place to start for 2022 is with resolving open issues in 2020.  

The liberal media derides those who question election integrity in the last election cycle, and dismiss voters as crazy conspiracy theorists. Yet Stacey Abrams basically worked with the media in manufacturing and selling false claims about our elections. The liberal media continues to reward her dishonesty with praise and profiles, building a national brand based on little more than false claims about elections.

In matters of election integrity, voters deserve the facts, because no matter which aisle you are on, fair and honest elections matter. 

Kelly Loeffler served as U.S. senator from Georgia from 2020-2021.