The public debate over Georgia’s new electoral law has become a stew of falsehood, propaganda and panic. Part of the blame lies in the party-political distortion of the Democrats, part in their media coverage, and part in the CEOs of large corporations who are at best uninformed or at worst cowardly.
Start with President Biden, the great unite, who on Wednesday called the law “Jim Crow on Steroids” to ESPN while saying he would “strongly support” the all-star game of Major League Baseball from Atlanta embarrassed. He takes the smear test on Georgia from Stacey Abrams, who still has not accepted that she lost the race for governor of Peach in 2018.
“You’re going to close a polling station at 5 am if working people just get out?” he said to ESPN. “This is about preventing working people and ordinary people I grew up with from voting.” Mr. Biden either doesn’t know what’s on the Georgia bill or he’s lying about it. We would like to believe it is the former, but that becomes more difficult to appreciate as its falsehoods multiply.
On Election Day in Georgia, anyone who queues by 7 p.m. will receive a ballot. The new law provides for an additional Saturday to vote while the early voting hours are set: the minimum is between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., but districts can run between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. In metropolitan areas, “you may not notice any change,” Georgia Public Broadcasting explains. Elsewhere: “You have an extra weekend day and your early weekday coordination hours will likely be longer.”
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Then there are the big corporations that issue public relations statements of condemnation, although their vagueness is often the most noticeable. The electoral law “is unacceptable and inconsistent with Delta’s values,” said the airline’s CEO Ed Bastian. He complained that he “had time to fully understand everything that is on the bill”.
