On Monday, Pro-Publica and GPB's Stephen Fowler produced a quiet follow to Secretary of State Brian Kemp's weekend decision to investigate the Democratic Party of Georgia for "possible cyber crimes."
The allegation, made as candidate Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams were in their final days of campaigning, revolves around the manner in which Democrats handled a tip about vulnerabilities in the state's voter registration data system. A taste of the article:
A representative for Kemp, the state's Republican candidate for governor, denied vulnerabilities existed in the state's voter-lookup site and said the problems alleged could not be reproduced. But in the evening hours of Sunday, as the political storm raged, ProPublica found state officials quietly rewriting the website's computer code.
ProPublica's review of the state's voter system followed a detailed recipe created by the tipster, who was described as having IT experience and alerted Democrats to the possible security problems. Using the name of a valid Georgia voter who gave ProPublica permission to access his voter file, reporters attempted to trace the security lapses that were identified.
…"We make changes to our website all the time," [Kemp spokeswoman Candice] Broce said. "We always move our My Voter Page to a static page before Election Day to manage volume and capacity. It is standard practice." By Monday afternoon, the page did not appear to be static in the way Broce described, and she did not respond to a request to provide evidence of the change.
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The most important local story on Monday that wasn't about today's election arrived just before midnight. From the AJC's Dan Klepal:
After more than 10 hours of debate and deliberation on Monday, the Atlanta City Council approved nearly $1.9 billion in public subsidies for a downtown development that will permanently reshape the city's skyline.
Council members listened to seven hours of public comment before beginning their own deliberations then taking four quick, successive votes on the Gulch development — a $5 billion deal that will create a forest of office towers, residences, hotels and retail space on 40 acres that stretch from the CNN Center to the Richard B. Russell Federal Courthouse.
The four ordinances, two of which passed by narrow 8-6 margins, were finally approved just before midnight.
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Marshall Shepherd, the UGA weather guru, last week warned about possible rough weather on Election Day. This morning, he says we can relax. Once we get past this morning's band of showers, all should be well.
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In the final hours, Georgia's race for governor has come down to race. Late Monday, the Brian Kemp campaign sent out the following via the candidate's Twitter account:
The Black Panther Party is backing my opponent. RT if you think Abrams is TOO EXTREME for Georgia!...
The Twitter message pointed to a Breitbart.com article in which the conservative website said it had obtained a photo of five African-American posers with long guns in southwest Atlanta. By “obtained,” the website apparently meant “saw on Facebook” – and posted by the figures dressed in leather.
An interesting point: Kemp made no mention of the long guns. Given that he has been endorsed by the NRA, that would have been awkward. Our AJC colleague Tia Mitchell has more here.
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Thanks to Kyle Griffin, who pointed us to this video posted by Oprah Winfrey, reacting to a racist robo-call that attempted to mimic the media mogul. Says Winfrey via Instagram:
"I heard people were making racist robocalls in my name against Stacey Abrams, who I am 100 percent for, in Georgia. I just want to say: Jesus don't like ugly. And we know what to do about that: Vote. Tomorrow, show up and show out, and vote."
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Agriculture chief Sonny Perdue has been in Georgia the last few days stumping for Brian Kemp, but that hasn't stopped the criticism flowing from Florida, where he called Florida's gubernatorial race "cotton-pickin' important" during a campaign speech over the weekend.
That contest features an Democratic nominee Andrew Gillum, an African-American, and has included plenty of racial overtones over the past few months.
In Georgia, during a Sunday interview on CNN, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams condemned Perdue's comments, which she said include "a throwback element to the language that we're hearing coming out of the Republican Party, that is unfortunately disparaging to communities." Gillum weighed in on Monday, not taking it too seriously, but adding that Perdue should "go back to Georgia. We'll take care of Florida."
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If you see someone fidgeting in a coffee shop today, odds are slightly more likely that he or she is a Democrat than a Republican. From the Gallup organization:
More than eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) say they are very or somewhat worried about what will happen if Republicans maintain control of one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday's midterm elections. Alternatively, 66% of Republicans and Republican leaners say they are very or somewhat worried about what will happen if Democrats win one or both houses of Congress.
Last week's AJC/Channel 2 poll framed it in more positive terms. Roughly 68 percent of Georgia Republicans and three-quarters of Democrats have labeled the midterm election as "much more important" or "more important" than past votes.
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