According to a Washington Post fact check of Biden’s claims about the law, “experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.” The changes added an additional mandatory Saturday of early voting, permits counties to hold early voting on Sundays, and gives them the option of setting longer voting hours.
There are only two major “restrictions” in Georgia’s new law. The first is shortening the period to request mail-in ballots from nearly 26 weeks before the election, i.e., half a year, to 11 weeks, a perfectly reasonable reform. The other is the requirement of voter ID for mail-in ballots, which matches what is already needed to vote in person and replaces the more corruptible process of signature verification.
So Georgia’s new voting law will increase the time available for early voting for most of the state’s residents and imposes reasonable limits on mail-in voting. Georgia even offers a free state ID that can be used specifically to fill the voter ID requirement. From nearly any angle, Georgia’s new law makes voting easier, not more difficult, while also making it more secure.
For that, Biden and others want the state punished. Biden has called the law “Jim Crow on steroids” and wants Georgia stripped of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. So does Jemele Hill at the Atlantic and the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. Actor Mark Hamill wants the entertainment industry to boycott Georgia, and Delta’s CEO has said that expanding opportunities for Georgians to vote “does not match” the company’s values.
The only person who doesn’t want a boycott is former and future candidate for governor Stacey Abrams because it turns out being seen as responsible for an economic boycott of your state is not good for your electoral chances. But she set the stage for this with her lies about voting in Georgia going back to her 2018 election loss, and it hasn’t stopped her from going to New Jersey to celebrate a state that allows fewer days of early voting than Georgia’s new law does.
Biden and other left-wing activists now want everyday Georgians to be punished for a law passed by a government they elected that expands voting opportunities for most voters in the state. It is political blackmail, done thanks in part to Abrams’s refusal to accept her loss in what is now considered a swing state. If anyone is promoting voter suppression in Georgia, it is Biden and his allies.