Georgia election laws supposedly were so restrictive that, in January, President Joe Biden traveled to Atlanta with a stark warning.
“Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things—voter suppression and election subversion,” Biden said. “That’s not hyperbole. That’s a fact.”
However, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Thursday that 1.13 million Georgians already had voted early in the Peach State, compared with 730,706 by the same point in the 2018 midterm elections.
In fact, early voting in Georgia this year is almost on par with the 2020 presidential election. Turnout in presidential election years typically is considerably greater than in off years.
Not only that, but in the 2022 primary season, Georgia had a 168% overall increase, compared with the 2018 primary.
After passage of the Georgia election reforms in 2021, Biden’s characterization of the new law was that it “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”
“I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” Biden said earlier this year of the upcoming midterm elections across the nation, citing congressional Democrats’ failure to pass their changes to federal election laws. Those changes effectively would have nullified election laws in Georgia and 18 other states.
The president’s argument was that there would be too much “voter suppression” for election results to be legitimate.
Now that early voting before Election Day has soared in Georgia, the White House is sticking with its “voter suppression” line.
“What I am saying is, you know, generally speaking, again more broadly speaking, of course higher voter turnout and voter suppression can take place at the same time,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday—without citing evidence.
“One doesn’t have to happen on its own,” Jean-Pierre said. “They can be happening at the same time. But I’ll leave it there, without being able to really dig into the politics of this.”
As I note in my new book “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections,” logic and evidence never have been requirements for the Left’s commitment to this narrative.
When asked, “Is the White House observing instances of voter suppression in Georgia and other states that adopted some of these laws over the last two years?” Jean-Pierre replied: “Look, we—we have seen, ourselves—I just laid out we’ve seen ourselves from what legislation—state legislations that we have seen across the country that is suppressing the right to vote.”
Since voter ID laws were passed in the early 2000s, Democrats have warned of systemic voter suppression and claimed it would target racial minorities.
In 2021, Georgia was among 19 states that passed election reforms to expand voter ID requirements to absentee ballots, crack down on ballot harvesting, and scrub voter registration rolls of the names of dead people and those who had moved.
Then and now, voter turnout increased across demographics.
“Looking at the demographics of Georgia’s voters so far, the electorate is older and blacker than this time in previous elections, as tightly contested races for U.S. Senate, governor, and other statewide offices is driving voter enthusiasm,” Georgia Public Broadcasting reported.
A Gallup poll last month found that 79% of Americans said they support voter ID laws, with majorities across racial and partisan demographics. The poll found far less support for maintaining voter rolls.
Americans support election integrity measures, political observers say, and the higher voter turnout in Georgia likely reflects growing confidence in election procedures.
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