Over the weekend, it was fake news deja vu all over again as MSNBC host Ali Velshi repeated discredited claims that Republican Brian Kemp engaged in shady activity to get himself elected governor in 2018.
This election misinformation redux came during an interview with Democrat Stacey Abrams on Saturday morning during the time slot left open by the recent canning of race provocateur Tiffany Cross.
Without mentioning that then-Secretary Kemp was enforcing a law passed by state Democrats in the 1990s, the MSNBC host set up the segment:
Unsurprisingly, Kemp won Georgia's race for governor by fewer than 55,000 votes out of four million in 2018. Kemp was the state's sitting secretary of state at the time, and in charge of running elections. Abrams and Democrats have long criticized what Kemp referred to as "voter list maintenance." Let me tell you a bit about that.
He then added:
In July of 2017, Kemp purged more than half a million people from Georgia's voting rolls, including roughly 107,000 people who were removed from the voter rolls only because they hadn't voted in recent elections. He also put some 53,000 voter registrations on hold before the 2018 election for running afoul of the so-called "exact match" system, meaning something as small as a dropped hyphen or an apostrophe could cause a voter's registration to be held up. An Associated Press analysis at the time found that nearly 70 percent of the voter registrations placed on hold were those of black voters even though Georgia's population is only 32 percent black.
Velshi did not mention that it was a voter registration group founded by Abrams to target minorities that sloppily handled thousands of applications by not including critical information like valid Social Security Numbers or valid names. Additionally, simply showing up on election day with the required photo ID would have still allowed applicants to vote. (According to Kemp, many were non-existent voters with made up names.)
Before the 2018 elections, these and other claims were debunked by NewsBusters repeatedly as news outlets repeated the discredited claims over and over again. Velshi kept repeating the misinformation all the way up until the day before the election.
A bit later, as he interviewed Abrams on Saturday, Velshi incorrectly claimed that it was made illegal in Georgia to provide water or snacks to voters standing in line when, in reality, a minimum distance requirement was established. Here's Velshi:
So they're the cornerstone of victory, and they were the target of a lot of voter suppression. For a lot of Americans, the imagery of voter suppression -- like we were just showing -- of pictures of Georgia of long lineups where it was made illegal to provide people with water or snacks as they vote -- of registration things that are impediments to people voting.
This latest misinformation on MSNBC was sponsored in part by Subway and T-Mobile. Their contact information is linked.
Transcript follows:
MSNBC Live
November 5, 2022
10:02 a.m. Eastern
ALI VELSHI: The rematch between Stacey Abrams and Governor Brian Kemp has been tight. Unsurprisingly, Kemp won Georgia's race for governor by fewer than 55,000 votes out of four million in 2018. Kemp was the state's sitting secretary of state at the time, and in charge of running elections. Abrams and Democrats have long criticized what Kemp referred to as "voter list maintenance." Let me tell you a bit about that.
In July of 2017, Kemp purged more than half a million people from Georgia's voting rolls, including roughly 107,000 people who were removed from the voter rolls only because they hadn't voted in recent elections. He also put some 53,000 voter registrations on hold before the 2018 election for running afoul of the so-called "exact match" system, meaning something as small as a dropped hyphen or an apostrophe could cause a voter's registration to be held up. An Associated Press analysis at the time found that nearly 70 percent of the voter registrations placed on hold were those of black voters even though Georgia's population is only 32 percent black.
(...)
STACEY ABRAMS, GEORGIA DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR: And I worked very hard to engage black voters because I know that they are the cornerstone of victory in the state of Georgia, and I was not going to leave a single stone unturned.
VELSHI: So they're the cornerstone of victory, and they were the target of a lot of voter suppression. For a lot of Americans, the imagery of voter suppression -- like we were just showing -- of pictures of Georgia of long lineups where it was made illegal to provide people with water or snacks as they vote -- of registration things that are impediments to people voting. How influential is that to people today? Are there black voters -- voters in general in Georgia -- who want to come out to vote just so that that stuff is reversed?
ABRAMS: That is exactly one of the reasons that people are turning out. And I want to remind folks that election day is still on Tuesday. We've seen outsized turnout in the state of Georgia among black voters, but we need to remember early voting was the beginning, not the end. But we know people turned out early because they understand that Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensberger put barriers in place -- that they're going to be denied access to food and water in lines in years past that have stretched up to four or eight hours.
They know that there have been more difficulties put in place for absentee ballots that white supremacist groups and hard right-wing groups have been challenging people's right to vote. Up to 75,000 people have had their right to vote challenged because of the law passed by Brian Kemp. And he did so because he was frustrated by the results. He's been lionized for not committing treason, but we keep ignoring the fact that, yes, you can deny the outcome of an election -- which is what so many have done -- but it is even more efficient to block access to that election. And that's been Brian Kemp's modus operandi.
VELSHI: It's cool in 2022, right, that you can congratulate somebody for not committing treason.
(...)
ABRAMS: Let's be clear, the false narrative that voter turnout dispels the idea of voter suppression misunderstands the effectiveness of suppression. Suppression has never been about stopping all voters. It's about clogging the arteries of the process and stopping certain voters. And there is precision to voter suppression that is going to be celebrated with the Merrill case, which is going to knock out the final leg of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. We've lost section 5 with the Shelby decision. The knocked out half of section 2 with the Brnovich decision in '21. The Merrill decision is going to close the loop. There will be no effective Voting Rights Act in half of the states that are having the fastest growing populations and where protection is so vital. And Brian Kemp has been the lead architect. His bill in Georgia becomes the blueprint in 24 states, and if it hasn't reached you yet, it's on its way.
VELSHI: So your group -- the Fair Right [sic] -- has worked to mobilize voters in Georgia back in 2014 -- then-Secretary of State Kemp framed the political battle with Democrats in racial terms. What has that evolved into now? How do people interpret it?
ABRAMS: To your point earlier, if someone shows you who they are, believe them. Brian Kemp has spent 16 years undermining the access to the right to vote for people of color. He has done so intentionally, assiduously, and with great success. But he does not get credit for the fact that we are turning out anyway. That is the result of organizers -- Georgia organizers who refuse to be cowed and refuse to be pushed back.
