Remember all the conniption fits thrown by much of the media last year over the new Georgia election law in which liberals declared it amounted to voter suppression? Even big companies in Georgia such as Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola went woke in denouncing the law. Major League Baseball also joined the political fray by moving the All-Star baseball game scheduled to be played in Atlanta out of the state.
Well, never mind. There has been a big change in voter turnout under the new law but instead of a suppressed vote, it has actually surged according to a report on page A-11 of Sunday's paper by Washington Post reporters Amy Gardner and Matthew Brown. The headline itself contradicts all the prophecies of voter suppression last year, "Voting is surging in Georgia despite controversial new election law."
...after three weeks of early voting ahead of Tuesday’s primary, record-breaking turnout is undercutting predictions that the Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021 would lead to a falloff in voting. By the end of Friday, the final day of early in-person voting, nearly 800,000 Georgians had cast ballots — more than three times the number in 2018, and higher even than in 2020, a presidential year.
...The Election Integrity Act, also known as Senate Bill 202, unleashed a furious backlash when it passed. Biden called it “Jim Crow 2.0.” Abrams accused its authors of “reviving Georgia’s dark past of racist voting laws.” The clothing retailer Patagonia condemned the bill, and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of Atlanta.
The subhead was "Activists say they adjusted their strategies to ensure a good turnout." It was terrible, so Democrats fixed it. Gardner and Brown acknowledged the bill signed by Gov. Brian Kemp was substantially different than what all the Democrats warned about. They also noted Republicans accused Democrats of hyping voter suppression to resonate with their base and raise money, and the results now show "the rhetoric around the law was false."
Among the many in the media who denounced the new Georgia election law last year was the Washington Post's own Greg Sargent who ranted vociferously against it in his March 26, 2021 column, "A scorching reply to Georgia’s vile new voting law unmasks a big GOP lie."
Georgia Republicans just passed a far-reaching voter suppression law that is shockingly blatant in its efforts to restrict voting. It was signed Thursday by Gov. Brian Kemp (R), as one Democratic lawmaker who sought to watch was arrested.
In multiple ways, the measure appears designed to target African American voters, the very voters who drove the 2020 Democratic wins. That complaint is at the core of a new lawsuit filed on Thursday night against the law.
But the lawsuit also exposes — in a fresh way — the appalling dishonesty of Republicans who continue using former president Donald Trump’s lie about the election to justify voter suppression efforts everywhere.
Paging Greg Sargent! Perhaps you should read your own newspaper to find out that your rabid claims of voter suppression due to the new Georgia election law was hyperbole in the extreme.
