Specifically on the issue of voter names being removed from rolls, Georgia’s law provided for the state to send a letter to voters who have not voted in three years. If they respond, then they stay on the rolls. If they don’t respond, and if they don’t vote, they still stay on the rolls for two more federal election cycles — four years — before their names are removed. It’s a seven-year process, the kind that has been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. Voters in the midst of that process could and did vote in the governor’s race. And focusing on the removals ignored the fact that Georgia’s voter rolls have been growing steadily, as has minority turnout.

After the voting results became indisputably clear, Abrams finally ended her effort, saying that under “the law as it stands,” Kemp “received an adequate number of votes to become the governor of Georgia.” But she refused to recognize the election result as legitimate.

Nor did some of her supporters. Indeed, if one sets aside the Russian effort to disrupt the 2016 election, the statements of Abrams and her supporters after the Georgia election stand as some of the most powerful efforts to undermine confidence in the legitimacy of the American democratic system in recent years.