Like Her Political Career, Stacey Abrams’ Election Lawfare Group Is Headed Toward Irrelevance
The left-wing elections group founded by Democrat darling Stacey Abrams is laying off a large percentage of its staff due to financial problems stemming from its ineffective lawsuits against election integrity laws and activists.
On Tuesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Fair Fight Action is axing 75 percent of its staff as part of an internal “restructuring” as the group grapples with ongoing debt issues. Despite raising more than $100 million from 2018-2021, Fair Fight is now $2.5 million in debt, with “only $1.9 million in cash in the bank.” The group was once considered “a fund-raising powerhouse for Democrats,” according to The New York Times.
In addition to inadequate fundraising, Salena Jegede, Fair Fight’s board chair, attributed the organization’s ongoing financial struggles to “rising litigation costs.” In recent years, Fair Fight has launched several frivolous lawsuits against Georgia’s voting procedures and election integrity activists who attempted to bring transparency to the state’s electoral system. Much like its founder’s 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial campaigns, these efforts have ended in failure.
In September 2022, an Obama-appointed federal judge struck down a suit brought by Fair Fight against Georgia over the state’s elections process. The group claimed there were “serious and unconstitutional flaws” in Georgia election law relating to, as Breitbart summarized, “absentee ballots, voter registration, and voter list management.” More specifically, Fair Fight baselessly asserted some of these voting practices suppressed racial minorities’ ability to vote.
Judge Steve Jones, however, ruled that “the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the [Voting Rights Act],” and that there was no evidence to suggest the practices discriminated against non-white voters. Fair Fight and other plaintiffs were ultimately ordered by the same court to repay Georgia more than $231,000 in court fees in January 2023.
Jones also struck down another suit brought by Fair Fight earlier this month. In that case, the left-wing organization accused election integrity activists of voter intimidation for challenging some Georgians’ voting eligibility following the 2020 election. In his ruling, Jones determined that efforts by both True the Vote and other activists to challenge potentially ineligible Georgia votes ahead of the Peach State’s 2021 Senate runoffs did not violate the Voting Rights Act.
“[B]ased on the evidence before [the court], there is insufficient evidence to show voter intimidation or attempted voter intimidation by Defendants against the voters in this case,” Jones wrote. Plaintiffs also failed to provide any evidence showing defendants’ actions “caused (or attempted to cause) any voter to be intimidated, coerced, or threatened in voting.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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