Georgia Voters Prove ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ Media Narrative Wrong
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Georgia voters turned out in record numbers to cast ballots in the 2022 primary elections, in a thorough drubbing of the left-wing media narrative that the electoral reform law enacted last year amounted to “Jim Crow 2.0.”
The law was met with outrageous claims from cable news pundits when it was enacted.
MSNBC host Joy Reid called the law as “putting Georgia on an express train back to the Jim Crow era.”
“These laws aren’t just foolish, these laws aren’t just racist, but they’re destructive to a functional democracy,” said MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson.
MSNBC anchor Tiffany Cross called the Georgia law “voter suppression.”
CNN anchor Don Lemon labeled it “Jim Crow 2.0” and “nothing less than an assault on the right to vote.”
The Washington Post editorial board stated that “the law on the whole makes voting needlessly harder, and with no sound policy rationale.”
In the end, Tuesday’s primary in the Peach State, and the weeks leading up to it, demonstrated how misleading those alarmist proclamations truly were.
Early voting, which was expanded under the new law, consisted of “more than 850,000 to cast a ballot in person or return an absentee ballot” — that’s a 212 percent increase from 2020 and a 168 percent increase from 2018, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
Overall, more than 860,000 people voted in the Georgia primaries as there were significant increases in the number of both Republican and Democratic voters, according to that office.
Moreover, voters reportedly encountered short lines at the polls.
“I had heard that they were going to try to deter us in any way possible because of the fact that we didn’t go Republican on the last election, when Trump didn’t win,” Patsy Reid, a 70-year-old Black voter, told The Washington Post about her experience voting early. “To go in there and vote as easily as I did and to be treated with the respect that I knew I deserved as an American citizen — I was really thrown back.”
A mea culpa from those in the media who decried Georgia’s electoral voting law is warranted. Don’t hold your breath, though.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
