The head of the Major League Baseball players union is threatening a push to strip Georgia of the All-Star Game over the state’s new election reform law. It would be another case of partisans trying to intimidate states to fall in line behind Democratic policies.
Georgia’s new law actually makes it easier to vote with most of its new provisions. It gives the state more authority to require more polling places or voting machines in precincts where voters are facing long lines (typically Democratic precincts). The law requires three weeks of early voting, including Saturdays, and gives counties the option of allowing it on Sundays as well. The law still allows no-excuse absentee voting and moves up the deadline for voters to request a mail-in ballot, allowing them more time to get their votes in before Election Day.
There are only two parts that Democrats are emphatically opposed to. The first replaces the signature verification process for absentee ballots and applications with an identifying number from a government-issued ID, making it consistent with Georgia’s requirements for in-person voting. This holds with the Democratic Party’s absurd opposition to voter ID requirements, which it contends are somehow racist.
The other is a gross misrepresentation of the state forbidding electioneering in the form of giving food and water to voters in lines. Listen to Democrats and their media boosters, and you would think voters were banned from having water with them at all. In reality, the state allows donations of water for polling places to make available for those waiting in line.
So you’re allowed to donate water for voters in lines that the state wants to shorten, just not to have volunteers attempt to solicit votes? That’s just like Jim Crow, according to President Joe Biden. And that’s good enough for the MLB Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark.
Never mind that New York has a similar law regarding giving voters food and drinks in lines on the books, or that Major League Baseball happily held a game in Cuba, a dictatorship with sham elections, as recently as 2016. Clark is only floating the possibility of bringing up the issue to MLB leadership, but it’s still just political blackmail.
It would add to a long list of activist athletes speaking out on issues without knowing what they are talking about. Demands that the All-Star Game be moved would add to a shorter but more egregious list of athletes trying to blackmail states into falling in line behind Democratic policies. MLB leadership should dismiss this notion out of hand if it is ever brought to them, or else just admit that it values partisanship above all else.
