By Greg Krieg, Veronica Stracqualursi and Joe Ruiz, CNN

(CNN) -- Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp's office said Sunday that it is investigating the Georgia Democratic Party over what it described as an attempted hack of the state's voter registration system on Saturday evening.

Democrats in the state vehemently denied the claim, and Kemp's office has not provided any evidence or indicated why the Democratic Party is being investigated as part of its probe.

The move comes just two days before Election Day, when voters will choose between Kemp, a Republican, and Democrat Stacey Abrams in the state's high-profile 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 Sunday morning news release indicating his office will now investigate the Georgia Democratic Party as part of the probe will only heighten those concerns.

"While we cannot comment on the specifics of an ongoing investigation, I can confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes," said press secretary Candice Broce in the release. "We can also confirm that no personal data was breached and our system remains secure."

The Georgia Democratic Party said in a statement Sunday that the "scurrilous claims are 100 percent false" and called the investigation "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.

The Secretary of State's Office later said the decision to launch the investigation was made after "receiving information from our legal team about failed efforts to breach the online voter registration system and My Voter Page."

Broce said the office immediately alerted the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. The FBI declined to comment.

"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.

Kemp's campaign was less circumspect, with spokesman Ryan Mahoney accusing state Democrats on Sunday of "trying to expose vulnerabilities in Georgia's voter registration system."

The Democratic National Committee deferred questions from CNN to the Georgia Democratic Party.

Abrams, the state's former House minority leader, told CNN's Jake Tapper that the investigation 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.

Kemp's position as secretary of state has been a major issue in his race for governor, particularly his role overseeing the state's elections. Democrats and advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have accused him 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.

Kemp has also been accused in a federal lawsuit of failing to secure 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."