President Joe Biden waded deeper into the voting rights fight this week with a sweeping speech in Philadelphia that drew on dramatic, and at times misleading, comparisons and figures.
Biden likened the election changes some GOP-controlled states are pursuing to a “21st century Jim Crow assault” on democracy, calling on Congress to pass a bill that would give the federal government control over election-related issues that go well beyond the ballot box.
Jim Crow refers to the segregation laws that relegated black Americans to second-class citizenship in the post-Civil War south. Like many other Democrats and progressive activists this year, Biden invoked that painful history to describe the administrative changes some states have made on issues such as absentee ballot deadlines and early voting hours.
BREAKING DOWN THE TEXAS VOTING BILL THAT DEMOCRATS FLED THE STATE TO BLOCK
While the Left has decried the changes as un-American, the Supreme Court effectively ruled earlier this month states can enact voting laws curbing fraud and streamlining election processes even if minority voters end up participating in elections less — so long as everyone has an “equal opportunity” to vote.
“Differences in employment, wealth, and education may make it virtually impossible for a State to devise rules that do not have some disparate impact,” the Court stated in its 6-3 majority opinion.
The Democrats’ intense focus on voting rights comes as the party searches for ways to keep its base engaged after winning both chambers of Congress and the White House in 2020.
Exit polls showed former President Donald Trump made inroads with voters of color. Recent fundraising numbers, sometimes interpreted as an indirect measure of enthusiasm and expectations, suggest Republicans are outpacing Democrats in Biden’s first year.
Here are some of the inaccuracies in Biden’s voting rights speech.
“This year alone, 17 states have enacted — not just proposed, but enacted — 28 new laws to make it harder for Americans to vote, not to mention, and catch this, nearly 400 additional bills Republican members of the state legislatures are trying to pass.”
The figure appears to come from the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, which claimed that as of June 21, legislatures in 17 states had enacted “new laws that restrict access to the vote.”
But the list provided by the center shows not all of the bills actually restrict voting access in any meaningful way.
For example, the first one on the list, Alabama H.B. 285, required voting machines to be installed and only operated indoors and stipulated that election workers can’t take ballots in and out of polling places except when they’re moving them to be counted.
Another one listed by the center as restrictive, Oklahoma H.B. 2663, actually added hours to vote early and in person because some voters in the state faced long lines in 2020.
The law also had a provision requiring absentee ballot applications to be received three weeks before Election Day to give voters more time to vote by mail and ensure their absentee ballot is received on time.
Yet another cited Nevada S.B. 84, which simply changed the number of registered voters covered under each precinct from 3,000 to 5,000.
And another, Utah H.B. 12, required the state to remove the information of voters who are confirmed dead from its rolls. While the center described the law as green lighting “purges,” the Utah law included protections for removing information from voter rolls in other circumstances.
For example, it forbade state officials from removing a voter’s information who has changed addresses unless the voter specifically requests it in writing.
Biden cited the 28 laws in 17 states as evidence GOP lawmakers are pursuing a uniform agenda “to make it harder for Americans to vote,” which is not supported by the texts of some of the laws.
“The focus will be on dismantling racially discriminatory laws, like the recent challenge to Georgia’s vicious anti-voting law.”
Georgia’s successful passage of a broad election bill earlier this year touched the current national debate about voting rights and inspired much of the same hyperbolic rhetoric Biden displayed on Tuesday.
However, the Georgia law actually expanded access to voting in some ways. State lawmakers added extra days for early voting across all counties — including the option for Sunday voting.
Peach State lawmakers extended voter ID requirements to absentee ballots to end the practice of signature matching, meaning the certification of a voter’s mail-in ballot by matching the signature on it to the signature on his or her voter registration. Critics of the practice say it is too subjective and can lead to proper ballots getting discarded.
Under the new law, voters must provide their driver’s license number or the number on their state ID card, which Georgia offers for free.
Even some of the most vocal voting rights advocates, such as Stacey Abrams, have come out in support of voter ID rules.
Polls have shown the overwhelming majority of Georgia voters, even liberal Georgians, back additional checks on absentee ballots.
Critics of the Georgia law have offered few specifics as to how the new rules are “racially discriminatory,” as Biden claimed.
“In Texas, for example, Republican-led state Legislature wants to allow partisan poll watchers to intimidate voters and imperil impartial poll workers. They want voters to dive [drive] farther and be able to be in a position where they wonder who’s watching them and intimidating them; to wait longer to vote. To drive a hell of lot lo- — excuse me — a long way — (laughter) — to get to vote. They want to make it so hard and inconvenient that they hope people don’t vote at all. That’s what this is about.”
The poll-watching provision of the Texas election bill has become its most controversial element, with critics echoing Biden’s claim that the law, if enacted, would amount to voter intimidation.
Some voting rights advocates point to the historical efforts of poll watchers to scare minority voters out of casting their ballot by placing unsanctioned demands at the ballot box.
But Texas Republicans argue the poll-watching provisions are meant to restore trust in elections by ensuring observers from both parties are granted free and equal access to most steps in the election process.
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In the wake of the 2020 election, Trump supporters exploited reports of poll watchers in other states being denied access to vote-counting centers as they promoted false claims of election fraud.
Supporters of the Texas bills, which state Democrats fled Texas to block, say the empowerment of poll watchers could preclude skeptics from questioning election results in the future by ensuring more transparency.
