Former President Barack Obama is heading to Atlanta on Friday to do some stumping for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the woman who is vying to be the first Black female governor in the United States.
Obama’s moves were announced just a day after President Donald Trump announced that he would be going to stump for Republican Gubernatorial candidate and current Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who has been accused of voter suppression.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Obama, who has been traveling supporting several Democratic candidates running for competitive seats, will be appearing at the Forbes Arena at Morehouse College on Friday at 5 p.m. Meanwhile, Trump will be in Macon on Sunday.
Abrams and Kemp are currently in a neck-to-neck battle for the seat, with a measly 1 to 2 percentage point average separating the two within the polls. The campaign has also been rife with contention as Kemp, as mentioned before, has been accused of voter suppression.
As the current Secretary of State, Kemp’s office is tasked with handling elections and voter registration, yet earlier this month it was discovered that his office has been sitting on more than 53,000 voter registration applications (70 percent of which belonged to Black voters), due to Georgia’s “exact match” registration verification process.
Later that same month, it was uncovered that some 107,000 people were removed from voting rolls in Georgia for failing to vote in previous elections due to the state’s “use it or lose it” policy.