On Saturday's AM Joy, MSNBC host Joy Reid was again pushing discredited accusations that Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams was undermined by "voter suppression" by Georgia Secretary of State and GOP gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp as she also wrongly claimed that Abrams had been "well ahead" in the polls before Election Day when Kemp, in fact, had usually been slightly ahead.
As she began the segment, she boosted the possibiility that public opinion might have been thwarted by election shenanigans as Reid incorrectly claimed that Democratic nominee Abrams had been "well ahead" before Election Day. Reid:
What happened? Stacey Abrams was well ahead in the polls consistently throughout -- how did we get here? I suspect I know the answer, and I suspect it's going to be unnerving and sort of tragic, but what do you think happened that reversed what had been a pretty consistent polling lead for Stacey Abrams?
Appearing as a guest, Columbus, Georgia Democratic Mayor Teresa Tomlinson also misleadingly claimed that Abrams had recently "pulled ahead" as she tried to correct Reid when, in fact, only one poll had recently shown Abrams with a lead -- but only by one point.
Tomlinson went on to misleadingly suggest that there were a significant number of absentee ballots that might so far be uncounted because of the "exact match" rules for signatures, even though the Atlanta Journal Constitution implied that the number of absentee ballots under threat of being thrown out over signatures was only about 1,000 in the entire state -- not enough to close a gap of tens of thousands of votes between Abrams and Kemp.
Host Reid followed up by claiming that Kemp had a "long history of voter suppression" that allowed him to "bioengineer" a great enough white electorate that was favorable to him. Reid: "I think the big, glaring spotlight on this race was about Brian Kemp's long history of voter suppression -- very sort of open, like brazen voter suppression."
After citing the often referred to 53,000 new voter registrations that were put on hold, and the purging of inactive voters which Georgia's secretary of state is required by law to do, Reid continued: "He essentially bioengineered an electorate that would be essentially with enough white voters and few enough voters of color to elect him."
A bit later, Bustle contributor and frequent MSNBC guest Karine Jean-Pierre asserted that Kemp "pickpocketed Jim Crow" as secretary of state. Once again, Democrats are more than happy to accept the legitimacy of elections where they win, but if they come up short, casting doubt is more than acceptable.
