More proof emerged last week that the establishment media lied earlier this year in “reporting” that Georgia was making it harder for minorities to vote.
Some day, Georgia will get its good reputation back, but it will never get back the money it lost when Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from majority-black Atlanta to overwhelmingly white Denver.
Perhaps Georgia should sue MLB for breach of contract.
Federal election data released late last week showed that just shy of an astonishing 95% of Georgia citizens aged 18 or older are registered to vote. And of the remaining few hundred thousand who aren’t registered, two-thirds of them are ineligible anyway because they are serving felony sentences — a restriction imposed by 48 of the 50 states.
In 2020, of those eligible to vote, more than 69% did so. This was higher than the national rate of 67%. Despite all the charges of “voter suppression,” the new voting law passed this year actually expands access to early voting, makes permanent some pandemic-created opportunities for voting at drop boxes, and takes steps to reduce waiting times in voting lines. With these changes, Georgia will likely continue to be a national leader, not a laggard, in voter participation.
It is true that Georgia moved this year to institute stricter identification requirements to vote — a commonsense measure supported nationwide by an overwhelming supermajority of voters. Such laws are important for election integrity, and evidence shows they do not reduce voter participation. Indeed, multiple studies have shown that ID laws have absolutely no negative effects on voter turnout, and a majority of states that implement such laws see an increase in turnout in subsequent elections.
Not just in Georgia but nationwide, voting is easier now, and voter turnout is trending higher now than it has at any time in U.S. history.
Claims against Georgia to the contrary were based on bad information and often made in bad faith. The much bigger problem is the lack of election security due to massive human and systemic error. If anything, neither Georgia nor any other state has taken enough precautions to ensure that election results are as trustworthy as they could be.
