Biden has made multiple false claims about the law. He said it shortens voting hours, which it doesn’t. He charged that it eliminates absentee ballots, which it doesn’t. He said it forbids anyone from giving water to voters waiting in line, which it doesn’t.

By the time of his ESPN interview on April 1, Biden had sharpened his script a bit — the Georgia law, he said, is “Jim Crow on steroids” — but repeated the falsehoods. Biden’s rhetoric recalled ugly statements from his past, most notably when, in 2012, he charged that then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would put black Americans “back in chains.”

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Biden’s words contributed to the atmosphere of hysteria that has grown up over the issue of the Georgia law. Indeed, not long after Biden spoke on ESPN, Major League Baseball announced that it will move the All-Star Game, set for Atlanta in July, out of Georgia because the law does not reflect professional baseball’s “values.”

It is not necessary to catalog the other crazy, alarmist, or simply exaggerated things that have been said about the law. You have heard many of them yourself. Worse, a number of big corporations, apparently motivated by fear of the woke mob, jumped to take irresponsible political positions. At times, for example, the leadership of Atlanta-based Delta Airlines sounded much like a Democratic Party political action committee.

But now, something appears to be changing. In some corners of the political world, sanity seems to be returning, if just a little bit.

On Sunday, the headline of the Politico Playbook newsletter was “The Dangers of Voting Rights Hyperbole.” It pointed to an article by Nate Cohn in the New York Times — the same newspaper that has done much to stir up the Georgia hysteria — arguing that “the law’s voting provisions are unlikely to significantly affect turnout or Democratic chances. It could plausibly even increase turnout. In the final account, it will probably be hard to say whether it had any effect on turnout at all.” The short version of the argument is that laws affecting the convenience of voting don’t really change turnout much. Events and candidates change turnout. In the last two elections, Donald Trump changed turnout. In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama changed turnout.

Politico also pointed to a Twitter thread by Slate’s Will Saletan assessing that the law has some good parts, some bad parts, and some overhyped parts. One could take issue with some of Saletan’s points — for example, his criticism that the law mandates a “shorter window to request [an] absentee ballot.” The old law allowed Georgia voters to request an absentee ballot 180 days before an election, which for a presidential election would mean requesting a ballot in May, when candidates have not even been formally chosen, for a November election. Why is it a bad thing to change that date to August, as the new law did?

On the other hand, Saletan praised the law because it “requires at least one drop box per count — expands days/hours available for early in-person voting — requires polls with long waits to add staff or another precinct (for next election) — [and contains an] online option for ballot applications (already begun, but now formalized).” The point is that Saletan actually evaluated what was in the bill, without the emotionalism that has marked so much of the so-called debate.

Saletan also pointed to this article on the bill, from Georgia Public Radio’s Stephen Fowler, that gave readers a far more balanced view of the bill than much of the national coverage.

Now, those are just a few examples. Much commentary on the law remains dangerously overheated. President Biden stands behind his false charges. Corporate executives are still cowering in fear. But even with all that, a few reasonable voices are being heard. Hopefully, they will be heard more in the days to come.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.