To hear President Joe Biden tell it, the very existence of our constitutional republic hinges on the Senate’s actions this week.
“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation’s history,” Biden said. “Will we choose democracy over autocracy? … I know where I stand. … I will defend the right to vote against all enemies, foreign and, yes, domestic.”
Sounds like pretty big stakes. If Biden is to be believed, one party this week is standing with Abraham Lincoln, while the other is filled with seditious traitors who deserve the death penalty — a bunch of Benedict Arnolds or Jefferson Davises.
But before Biden has the FBI round up the entire Republican Party on charges of treason, perhaps it would be wise to pause and examine the substance of his claims.
Is democracy at stake this week? Does Georgia’s election law, as Biden claimed yesterday, really mean the end of the right to vote?
Of course not.
Biden complained that the Georgia law is “making it harder for you to vote by mail.” That is technically true, but are the restrictions the end of democracy? The law requires absentee voters to submit a valid voter identification number (such as a driver’s license or Social Security number) with their absentee ballot. So do three other states, including Ohio and Minnesota. So how long has democracy been dead in Ohio and Minnesota?
Biden also complained that the law limits the number of absentee ballot drop boxes — the ballots can also all be placed in any mailbox, by the way. But Georgia had zero drop boxes prior to the 2020 election. Was democracy dead in Georgia every year before 2020?
Biden claims he’s worried that the law forbids campaign workers from giving gifts, including food and water, to voters in line to vote. But nothing in the law prevents election officials from giving food and water to voters. Moreover, the ban for campaign workers only applies within 150 feet of the polling place. Again, a threat to democracy this is not.
Finally, Biden claimed that the Georgia law makes it easier for partisan actors to remove local election officials. He made it sound like this could be done while votes are being counted. That isn’t true at all. In fact, the appointees of the state Legislature would have to establish “nonfeasance, malfeasance, or gross negligence” in two consecutive prior elections before any one election official could be removed from power. And even then, the removal would be good for only nine months.
Considering how awful some local election boards have performed during elections in Georgia — just think of all the long lines in Fulton County — this provision will probably make it easier for Georgians to vote.
It is instructive that Biden gave this speech in Georgia and not in Arizona or West Virginia. Biden knows he needs the votes of all 50 Democratic senators to nuke the filibuster and pass the Democrats’ federalized election law, which would ban voter identification laws in all 50 states. Voter identification laws are very popular, particularly in deep-red states like Sen. Joe Manchin’s West Virginia and purple ones like Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s Arizona.
No, Manchin and Sinema were not the real audience for yesterday’s speech. Yesterday’s speech was a pathetic show put on by a powerless president who is desperate to show he is still relevant. He has to appear to be fighting for his party’s doomed legislative agenda no matter how out of touch with reality that perception is.
