A post shared on Facebook claims Democratic Georgia Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and incumbent Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp sparred over voting rights in a 2022 debate.

Verdict: Misleading

The moment mentioned is from 2018, not a recent debate. The two candidates have yet to appear for any forum.

Fact Check:

Kemp is currently leading Abrams in an average of recent polls in the state, according to RealClearPolitics. Kemp defeated Abrams in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election by 55,000 votes, which Abrams conceded after refusing to concede at first, The New York Times reported.

The Facebook image claims Abrams and Kemp sparred over issues related to voting rights at “tonight’s debate.” The post cites another upload from the political page Occupy Democrats.

“Stacey Abrams flips the table on Governor Brian Kemp at tonight’s debate after he accuses her of voter fraud, reminding him that when she sued him, a federal judge found that HE ‘illegally canceled over 34,000 voter registrations,'” the caption reads.

While the moment in question did occur, it is from a previous debate, not a recent one. Abrams and Kemp sparred in an October 2018 debate, which can be seen on YouTube, over the cancellation of 34,000 voter registrations. (RELATED: Did Stacey Abrams Say, ‘We Don’t Need Farmers, When We Have Grocery Stores’?)

The candidates agreed in June to two debates that are scheduled to take place in October, according to CBS 46. Check Your Fact could not find any evidence that the two had a debate on Aug. 31 or previously. Both candidates’ Twitter accounts also show neither have sparred recently about canceled voter registrations.

A previously lawsuit from 2016 saw “Georgia restoring more than 42,000 previously purged voters to the rolls” following a settlement according to a February 2017 press release from the Lawyer’s Committee For Civil Rights Under Law. The state has recently sought to purge 102,000 voters from rolls who may have died or moved, the Associated Press reported.

This is not the first time misrepresented issues regarding Georgia elections have circulated on social media. Check Your Fact previously debunked a claim from April 2022 suggesting the state found 1,600 instances of non-citizens voting in the 2020 presidential election.