It is hard to tell from the demagoguery and race-baiting by President Joe Biden, but Georgia’s new law on voting—which is presently the model legislation for 43 state legislatures that are dealing with the same problem—actually expands access to voting while cleaning up and addressing the abuses of the 2020 election. Polls are open longer, including required weekend voting; however, one must provide ID to get an absentee ballot, giving absentee voters no advantage over people who vote in person. Also, election officials are not allowed to receive monies from private groups and/or foundations. Major abuses occurred on both counts in 2020.
Yet Biden went off again on April 1 on how the law is “Jim Crow on steroids,” repeating one of his two whoppers, that the law closes voting at 5 p.m. so as to prevent working people from voting. (Biden’s other whopper is that it is now a crime to provide water for voters standing in line. In fact, the law provides for election officials to provide water, while it prevents outside groups from approaching voters standing in line. C’mon, Joe!) No one can figure out where he gets this from.
The Washington Post fact checker, admitting that there is nothing in the law about closing the polls at 5 p.m., offered that perhaps someone briefed Biden on some discussion that never made it into the actual bill—but it remains a mystery. Regardless, what is known is that the subject clearly touches a nerve with Biden, evidencing no little anxiety over the voting practices that got him into the office. The curious part is that Biden’s advisers seem to have no interest in fixing the gaffe. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is whether the extracurricular circumventing of voting law in 2020, unchallenged, will be allowed to become, de facto, the new reality. Will the kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar not only get to swallow his cookies, but also to penalize those who object?
