Augusta – Stacey Abrams took a campaign detour to the scene of one of the more controversial moments of this year's election: A senior center where county officials prevented a third-party group from taking elderly black residents to a voting site.
At a stop early Tuesday in Louisville, the Democratic candidate for governor met with several of the voters taken off the bus and urged them to “use your vote to lift your voice and make certain that people know that you have aright to vote.”
The bus was run by the nonprofit Black Voters Matter and was preparing to depart from a senior center operated by Jefferson County when the center's director ordered the passengers off the vehicle. Video footage shot by ThinkProgress showed the seniors being instructed to disembark.
The episode quickly gained national attention and brought scrutiny to the county, a sparsely populated east Georgia area that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.
A county administrator said that local leaders “felt uncomfortable with allowing senior center patrons to leave the facility in a bus with an unknown third party.” And the county said it considered the event “political activity,” which is banned at county-sponsored events, because a local Democratic official helped organize it.
Voting rights has played an increasing role in the race for governor amid a spate of lawsuits filed in the closing weeks of the race challenging Gwinnett County's handling of absentee ballots, the status of more than 50,000 "pending" voter registrations and the state's signature matching policy.
Shortly after her event in Louisville, Abrams wasn’t ready to call what happened in Louisville voter suppression, but she said “we have to look at every issue with a little bit of skepticism and make sure that everyone knows they have a right to vote.”
