Stacey Abrams is lying to you on purpose

Photo by: Rob Thomas, The Capital Times

This is going to be shocking, but Stacey Abrams, who, to this day, denies she lost the election 3 years after the fact…has a loose relationship with the truth.

ICYMI, the Washington Post awarded Stacey Abrams two Pinocchios for her false and misleading comments during last week’s Senate hearing, which echoed comments that President Biden made, earning him four Pinocchios.

“Stacey Abrams’ continued campaign of misinformation has caused mass boycotts across Georgia, which will lead to millions in lost revenue and could decimate the state’s economy,” said RGA Spokesperson Maddie Anderson. “Her words and actions are unacceptable, deeply irresponsible, and intentionally misleading. Each time she tells yet another lie, Georgians are reminded of why they rejected her as their governor in 2018.”

Washington Post:

“It restricts the hours of operation because it now, under the guise of setting a standardized timeline, it makes it optional for counties that may not want to see expanded access to the right to vote. They can now limit their hours. Instead of those hours being from 7 to 7, they’re now from 9 to 5, which may have an effect on voters who cannot vote during business hours, during early voting.”

— Stacey Abrams, former minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, at a Senate hearing April 20

“Another example is the falsity that this expands hours for voting. Yes, it codifies that you can vote between 9 to 5 as business hours, but for 78 percent of Georgians, prior to this bill the hours for voting during early voting was 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. So this actually eliminates hours of voting and mandates only a shortened period of time.”

— Abrams, during the same hearing

The first set of comments, addressed to Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), was contained in a clip from a Senate hearing that went viral on Twitter. Her remarks caught our attention because they seemed similar to remarks made by President Biden about a new Georgia election law that had earned him Four Pinocchios.

In fact, when our fact check was cited during the hearing by a Republican senator, Abrams suggested that the Fact Checker misunderstood the situation. That’s when she made the second set of comments above. That really caught our attention.

We ended up having an extended back-and-forth with Seth Bringman, a spokesman for Abrams, over the matter.  Abrams’s language is more carefully phrased than what Biden said, but we still conclude it is misleading.

…

Abrams leaves the impression that the previous hours were 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and avoids saying the previous law had a vague “normal business hours” standard that sometimes meant even less than 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For ordinary people not attuned to the debate over the Georgia law, her language misleadingly implies that voting is restricted to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., especially when she says the law “eliminates hours of voting.”

Two Pinocchios

Read the full fact check here.