‘Voting Group” Accused of “Financial Misuse & Irregularities”

The New Georgia Project is a voting rights organization founded by the state’s Democrat star, Stacey Abrams. It was overseen for more than two years by Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock. According to a six-month POLITICO investigation, it is beset by allegations of financial misuse and irregularities.

Failed Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams founded the voting rights group, which aimed to register voters. Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock oversaw the project for two years.

Abrams left a leadership role in 2017 when she first ran for governor. Warnock was chair from 2017 to January 2020, when he began a Senate campaign.

The New Georgia Project is filed under two federal tax designations. It cannot engage in politics as a 501(c)3 but also as a 501(c)4. That designation allows it to use half of its work for politicking.

Abrams created the New Georgia Project in 2014. It is “an offshoot of another Abrams-founded nonprofit called Third Sector Development.”

It’s so ironic since she continually accused Governor Kemp of election irregularities. She even refused to concede the election for governor, claiming it was stolen from her.

The project played a key role in registering the new voters necessary to turn Georgia from a red state to a swing state with two Democratic senators is conducting its own internal probe into its finances in response to the claims of irregularities, one of its two board chairs.

The project is a mess.

The former executive director, Nse Ufot, a national voting rights leader chosen by Abrams, left last year after eight years and owes thousands in reimbursements. He said he doesn’t owe anything, and it’s a “f***** lie.”

It might have been the result of their extremely poor record-keeping.

Employees are quitting or being fired. One employee said:

“I went there all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I’m disillusioned now,” recalled a former C-suite employee. “I got the assumption that it was driven by ego after the 2020 elections. There was this: ‘We can do anything we want; look at how much money we got.’ … I think these things, combined with no checks and balances and not having an operations department in place that is allowed to put in policies, procedures, and safeguards — which is what I thought I was hired to do — and the rapid growth has just facilitated this.”

There are tax problems:

POLITICO obtained records from two Wells Fargo bank accounts controlled by the New Georgia Project, which had been turned over to the state Ethics Commission as part of its probe into possible violations of its tax status.

This is very serious, given the impact on the elections, but will anyone pay the price?