Washington (CNN) Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams dismissed criticism from President Donald Trump on Sunday after he called her unqualified to lead the state. 
 
 "He's wrong," Abrams said on CNN's "State of the Union." "As President (Barack) Obama pointed out, I am the most qualified candidate running." 
 
 Abrams, a graduate of Yale Law School, was the minority leader in the Georgia State House of Representatives and is in a closely fought race against Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp to succeed Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. 
 
 Trump said recently that Abrams was "not qualified" for the job, and Obama rebutted the point in a visit to the state, calling her the "most experienced, most qualified candidate in this race." 
 
 Asked why he did not believe Abrams was qualified, Trump said to "take a look at her past" and "what she wants to do and what she has in mind for the state." He did not elaborate on what he was referring to or provide further evidence on his attack against Abrams. 
 
 Read More ||||| (CNN) Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp set off a political firestorm when his office, two days before an election in which he is a candidate, announced on Sunday morning that it had opened an investigation into the Georgia Democratic Party in connection with what it described as an attempted hack of the state's voter registration system. 
 
 But that initial advisory lacked key details about how Kemp's office was made aware of potential security vulnerabilities in the state's electronic voter information page, which the secretary of state oversees. A series of email chains obtained by CNN indicate that, rather than taking part in any alleged "hack," the Georgia Democrats had simply passed along information regarding security concerns from a concerned voter to a private cybersecurity firm, which in turn shared its concerns with Kemp's office. 
 
 Democrats in the state have vehemently denied the allegations from Kemp's office, which also raised fresh criticism of Kemp's dual role as both the Republican nominee for governor and the state's chief election official. 
 
 "It's wrong to call it an investigation," Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams told CNN on Monday . "It's a witch hunt that was created by someone who is abusing his power." 
 
 Kemp will face off against Abrams on Tuesday in the state's high-profile and close race for governor. Democrats and advocacy groups have previously argued that Kemp has a conflict of interest in overseeing an election he is also running in, and some have called on him to resign. 
 
 The latest controversy began with an early morning announcement from Kemp's office claiming there had been a "failed attempt to hack the state's voter registration system" and that the secretary of state's office has opened an investigation "into the Democratic Party of Georgia on the evening of Saturday, November 3, 2018." 
 
 The bulletin provided no evidence for the claims. 
 
 Later Sunday, however, CNN obtained a series of emails the Secretary of State's office said led it to level the accusations of hacking into its voter registration system by the Georgia Democratic Party. The emails refer to findings by a voter who said he had discovered potential vulnerabilities in the state's voter information page and its online registration system. 
 
 That voter, Richard Wright, took his concerns to the Georgia Democratic Party's voter protection hotline to alert authorities, according to his lawyer, David Cross. Cross told CNN Wright is not affiliated with any political party and does not want to speak to any media right now. He also said that Wright has some software background, but is not a hacker. 
 
 According to Cross, Wright -- the voter whose findings prompted accusations of attempted hacking -- was looking up his own registration information on the state's My Voter Page when he discovered he could access other people's information too. The system, he found, doesn't verify who's making the query and, for that reason, it appeared to him that voters' private information could be accessed and that voter registrations could even be edited by anyone on the site. 
 
 Wright went over his concerns with Cross, who has battled with Kemp over similar issues before, including a 2016 lawsuit that alleged cyber security vulnerabilities in Georgia's voting system, at 3 p.m. on Friday. Unclear on the implications of what Wright had found, Cross brought in a cyber security firm to look at the website. While that firm couldn't verify the vulnerability either, they too saw a potential for concern, Cross told CNN. 
 
 "If Richard Wright had never contacted the Democratic Party on Saturday morning," his lawyer, David Cross, told CNN, "no one would be talking about the Democratic Party. It's only because Wright alerted them that Kemp draws it back to them." 
 
 Candice Broce, the spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's office told CNN on Sunday night that there were no vulnerabilities in the system, said the system is secure and that representatives from Kemp's office were meeting on Monday with authorities of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, FBI and Department of Homeland Security. The federal agencies, she said earlier, had been immediately alerted of her office's concerns. 
 
 "The State of Georgia has notified us of this issue. We defer to the State for further details," a DHS official said in a statement to CNN. The FBI declined to comment. 
 
 Abrams told CNN on Sunday night that she believed Kemp had lied to voters over the seriousness of what had been discovered. 
 
 "Brian Kemp once again is trying to cover up for his failures in cybersecurity by blaming someone else," she said. "We have nothing to do with this and I'm sad that instead of owning up to his responsibility, he's once again misleading Georgia." 
 
 Her remarks echoed what the state party had said earlier in the day, when it called the allegations "another example of abuse of power" by Kemp. 
 
 "This political stunt from Kemp just days before the election is yet another example of why he cannot be trusted and should not be overseeing an election in which he is also a candidate for governor," the state party's executive director, Rebecca DeHart, said in a statement. 
 
 In the emails obtained by CNN, there is an exchange between a volunteer in the party's voter protection program and its director in which they refer to findings by a voter -- Wright -- who said he had discovered potential vulnerabilities in the state's voter information page and its online registration system. 
 
 The emails refer to an attachment that Kemp's office said was computer programming code. Kemp's office received the chain of emails from a representative of a cybersecurity expert who the Georgia Democratic Party asked to evaluate the potential vulnerabilities. The expert noted the computer programming code was possibly tantamount to "a massive vulnerability." 
 
 CNN has not viewed the code. 
 
 As his office's accusations began to circulate, Kemp's campaign lashed out at Democrats for "trying to expose vulnerabilities in Georgia's voter registration system." 
 
 Before the details of how Kemp's office became aware of the specific concerns were made public, Abrams, the state's former House minority leader, told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday morning that any investigation now was an attempt to distract voters two days before the election. 
 
 "I've heard nothing about it, and my reaction would be that this is a desperate attempt on the part of my opponent to distract people from the fact that two different federal judges found him derelict in his duties and have forced him to accept absentee ballots to be counted and those who are being held captive by the exact match system to be allowed to vote," Abrams said Sunday on "State of the Union." 
 
 "He is desperate to turn the conversation away from his failures, from his refusal to honor his commitments and from the fact that he's part of a nationwide system of voter suppression that will not work in this election because we're going to outwork him, we're going to out vote him and we're going to win," she said. 
 
 Democrats and advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have accused Kemp of using his position to suppress the minority vote through purges of the voting rolls and what they have described as an overzealous enforcement of already strict laws. 
 
 A federal court issued an injunction barring the state from rejecting absentee ballots whose signatures don't directly match those on voters' registration. An appeals court declined Kemp's request to end the injunction late last week. 
 
 Kemp has denied those allegations and, when asked during a debate last month, said he would not recuse himself in case of a recount. Recent polling finds the candidates in a dead heat. If neither wins an outright majority, there will be a runoff on December 4. 
 
 Concerns over Georgia voters' information security are not new. Kemp has been accused in a federal lawsuit of failing to safeguard his state's voting system as secretary of state and allowing a massive breach in 2015 that exposed 6 million registered Georgia voters' records and other sensitive election information. 
 
 Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance and a plaintiff in the suit, said in August that it remained unclear if Georgia's election system was infected with malware or potentially breached by foreign hackers. 
 
 The coalition's lawsuit sought to force the state to implement paper ballot-based voting so results could be audited. Georgia is one of only a handful of states that currently use voting machines statewide without paper trails. 
 
 Kemp responded by assuring that Georgia's voting equipment "remains accurate and secure" and that the "hysteria" behind pressuring Georgia to switch to a paper ballot system is based on "misinformation." ||||| Highlights 
 
 There’s no indication that voter registration information was breached. 
 
 The Democratic Party of Georgia said Kemp is trying to deflect attention from vulnerabilities in the state’s online voter registration website. 
 
 The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office has asked the FBI to investigate as well. 
 
 Just two days before the election, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office launched an investigation Sunday into the Democratic Party after an alleged attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system. 
 
 Kemp, who is the Republican candidate for governor on Tuesday’s ballot, didn’t provide evidence linking the Democratic Party to the hacking attempt. He faces Democrat Stacey Abrams in the election. 
 
 The Democratic Party of Georgia called the allegation “100 percent false” and “an abuse of power” by Kemp’s office. 
 
 Stacey Abrams responds to Secretary of State investigation 
 
 After election officials received a report Saturday that the state’s voter registration website was vulnerable, they blamed the Democrats instead of correcting the issue, said Democratic Party of Georgia Executive Director Rebeccca DeHart. 
 
 PDF: Read Democratic emails about the alleged hack 
 
 The explosive 11th-hour development Sunday intensified calls for Kemp to resign as the state’s top election official while he’s running for Georgia’s top political post. Throughout the campaign he has refused to do so. 
 
 A recent poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 has Kemp and Abrams locked in a ﻿dead heat﻿. 
 
 The hacking allegation arose from concerns raised by a computing expert that anyone’s voter registration information could be obtained from the state’s My Voter Page and voter registration site. 
 
 The Secretary of State’s Office said the system remains secure and voter information wasn’t breached, but there was an attempt to penetrate the system. 
 
 The website’s vulnerability could allow someone to access personal information, such as their driver’s license numbers and address, and potentially change voter registration information without permission, said Richard DeMillo, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech. 
 
 “The way the website is set up, once you get access to your own voter record, you can go in and change permissions and get access to anyone’s voting records,” DeMillo said. “You can change voter registration. You can download personally identifiable information.” 
 
 Abrams called Kemp’s investigation “a desperate ploy.” 
 
 “He twice this week was told by federal judges that he was wrong when it comes to voter suppression,” Abrams told Channel 2 Action News. “He is trying to rile up his base by misleading voters yet again." 
 
 How voting issues became a big issue in Georgia’s governor race 
 
 Your guide to Georgia voting integrity and access 
 
 Voting access has been a flashpoint throughout the campaign. 
 
 Kemp’s office said it opened the investigation after receiving information from its lawyers about failed efforts to breach voter registration websites. 
 
 “We are working with our private sector vendors and investigators to review data logs,” said Candice Broce, spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s Office. “We have contacted our federal partners and formally requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate these possible cyber crimes." 
 
 But an attorney for a group suing over the security of Georgia’s electronic voting machines said he provided the information about the vulnerability to the state’s attorneys. 
 
 “Someone was making a good-faith effort to determine if there’s a vulnerability, and he’s coming after them and saying it’s hacking,” said the attorney, David Cross. “It’s another failure of Kemp’s office to actually have a secure election system in the state.” 
 
 Democrats said Kemp’s investigation is a “political stunt” just before Election Day. 
 
 “Brian Kemp is desperate to save his failing campaign, and it's likely we'll see even more of his abuses of power as the election nears,” DeHart said. 
 
 Kemp’s campaign said the Democrats tried unsuccessfully to expose vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voter registration system. 
 
 “This was a fourth-quarter Hail Mary pass that was intercepted in the end zone,” said campaign spokesman Ryan Mahoney. “Thanks to the systems and protocols established by Secretary of State Brian Kemp, no personal information was breached. These power-hungry radicals should be held accountable for their criminal behavior.” 
 
 The alleged hacking attempt occurred Saturday evening, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. 
 
 The accusation from Kemp’s office came as President Donald Trump was visiting Georgia to campaign for Kemp. 
 
 The poll by The AJC and Channel 2 found that many voters say they’re deeply skeptical about the integrity of Georgia’s elections, including concerns about tampering and ineligible voters casting ballots. 
 
 Forty-nine percent of respondents saying they believe it’s likely or very likely that many people will show up to vote and be told they’re not eligible, according to the poll, which has a 3 percentage point margin of error. 
 
 Almost as many of those surveyed are concerned about fraud, with nearly 48 percent saying it’s likely or very likely that people who aren’t eligible will vote in the election. 
 
 The concerns largely broke along party lines. 
 
 Please return to AJC.com and PoliticallyGeorgia.com for updates.
– If you thought the race for Georgia governor had gotten testy enough, welcome to an even testier Sunday: The office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate, announced overnight that it is investigating a "failed attempt to hack the state's voter registration system," specifically, "the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes." The party in question, which has accused Kemp of voter suppression and using his office to further his gubernatorial aspirations, dismissed the "scurrilous claims" as "100 percent false" and another "abuse of power," reports CNN. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls the move "explosive," and notes that Kemp's office did not proffer any evidence. Both sides are pounding the pavement for their candidates, with VP Mike Pence stumping for Kemp and President Trump dismissing Democrat Stacey Abrams as "not qualified" for the state's top job. Abrams, appearing Sunday on CNN, scoffed at both Trump and Kemp's investigation. "He's wrong," she said of Trump. "As President (Barack) Obama pointed out, I am the most qualified candidate running." Of Kemp she called it "a desperate attempt ... to distract people from the fact that two different federal judges found him derelict in his duties." The AJC notes that the two are in a dead heat ahead of Tuesday's vote.