Last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act represents “Jim Crow” segregation laws because it would require states to obtain proof of citizenship in person when people register to vote.
“I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, the SAVE Act would impose Jim Crow-type laws to the entire country,” Schumer said. It marks the second time in five years that Democrats have mounted fierce opposition to voter identification requirements, echoing the backlash from Democrats, much of the press, and corporate America after Georgia passed its own voter ID law.
The controversy traces back to March 2021, just days after Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) signed Georgia’s voting reform bill into law, when James Quincey, CEO of Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, publicly rebuked the measure, saying, “This legislation is unacceptable. It is a step backwards … and needs to be remedied, and we will continue to advocate for it both in private and now even more in public.”
Within hours, a surge of corporate criticism was directed at Kemp, and within days, Major League Baseball moved the All-Star Game out of the state. Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot, Porsche Cars North America, and the Atlanta Falcons — all Georgia-based organizations — also criticized the law, echoing Democratic Party claims about its provisions and effects.
The corporate backlash served as a supporting chorus, while the leading role was played by the Democratic Party, aided by significant reinforcement from the press.
Then-President Joe Biden called the Georgia election law “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity,” promising that his Justice Department would sue to stop implementation.
CNN said it was a new law designed to “restrict access to the ballot” after the record 2020 presidential election.
New York Times writer Charles Blow wrote a piece headlined “Jim Crow 2.0 rises in wake of 2020.” And then-Vice President Kamala Harris told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the Georgia election law was clear voter suppression.
Kemp argued that the wave of what he called false hysteria created real economic fallout across the state, hitting small businesses especially hard. He noted that many of the vendors who lost opportunities tied to the relocated MLB All-Star Game were local entrepreneurs, including many minorities, who had hoped to recover from a year of pandemic-related losses by selling food, merchandise, and other goods during the event.
“They overplayed their hand,” Kemp told me, adding that the corporations didn’t even know what was in the bill.
“The bill that we passed made it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” he said. “It dealt with the mechanical issues that we saw in the 2020 election with things like drop boxes and confusion because of all kinds of different groups mailing out absentee ballot applications.”
In short, the bill addressed many of the problems the state encountered with pandemic-era voting changes. But Democrats branded it “voter suppression,” much like the argument Schumer is advancing now, and never reconsidered. In the process, they brought corporate America and MLB along with them.
A Pew Research Center survey done last year found that a whopping 83% of American adults support requiring some form of government-issued photo ID to vote, including 71% of Democrats and 95% of Republicans. Only 16% of Americans oppose it.
Voter ID likely receives broad support in part because Georgia proved it not only worked, but it drew out a lot more people.
“The results speak for themselves. We had record turnout in early voting after we passed the Elections Integrity Act. We had over 1.52 million black voters who turned out, which set a new record,” he said, adding, “I believe it was the largest African American turnout in the country.”
Georgia also set a record for total votes cast in the 2022 midterm elections. On the final day of early voting in 2024, black voter turnout reached a record high.
The University of Georgia did a survey after the 2022 election and found that 97% of black voters said their voting experience was excellent or good. And 99% of black voters said they felt safe while waiting to cast their ballot.
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SMALL TOWN PAPERS IS CLOSING
In fact, the survey found that 0% of black voters said they had a bad experience voting in 2022.
Kemp said Schumer calling the SAVE Act or any kind of voter ID or a citizenship check Jim Crow 2.0 and suppression is ridiculous in the modern world.
