{"id":110074,"date":"2021-04-06T21:12:23","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T21:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=2feb47da0f976e6608cf855a60a2f9da"},"modified":"2021-04-06T21:12:23","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T21:12:23","slug":"republicans-trip-over-themselves-to-defend-georgia-voter-suppression-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/06\/republicans-trip-over-themselves-to-defend-georgia-voter-suppression-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Trip Over Themselves to Defend Georgia Voter Suppression Law"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Georgia<\/a>

After Major League Baseball (MLB) announced it would be moving its All-Star Game away from Georgia because of the state\u2019s recently passed voter suppression law, Republicans began downplaying the law that many critics have called a rehash of \u201c<\/span>Jim Crow<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When MLB announced that the game would now be in Denver, Colorado, Republicans scrambled to compare the two locations, arguing that Colorado\u2019s voting laws are just as bad as Georgia\u2019s. Republicans like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on <\/span>Fox<\/span><\/i> that MLB\u2019s decision is \u201c<\/span>so hypocritical<\/span><\/a>\u201d because Colorado has fewer early voting days and also has voter ID requirements. That argument has also <\/span>been echoed<\/span><\/a> by many other Republicans like National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Matt Whitlock.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As many have pointed out, however, these comparisons are superficial at best. Colorado has fewer early voting days because the <\/span>state mails ballots<\/span><\/a> to every registered voter before an election, which voters can then mail back or drop off at a drop box. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While Colorado does have voter ID requirements — which are <\/span>historically discriminatory<\/span><\/a> — for those who vote in person, it accepts 10 more forms of identification than <\/span>Georgia\u2019s six<\/span><\/a>; additionally, voters without an ID can vote <\/span>via a provisional ballot<\/span><\/a> or simply vote by mail if they\u2019ve voted before. Colorado\u2019s elections are so open that the state consistently has <\/span>some of the highest voter turnout<\/span><\/a>, including in 2020, when the <\/span>state ranked second<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pointing out Colorado\u2019s ID laws is also a sidestep from what critics were truly concerned about regarding Georgia\u2019s voter ID law: unnecessarily strict ID requirements for <\/span>absentee ballots<\/span><\/a> on top of already strict photo ID requirements <\/span>in the state<\/span><\/a> for in-person voting.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With these comparisons between the two states, Republicans are also attempting to flatten the Georgia bill to imply that any sort of voter ID requirements — which are <\/span>to be found in most states<\/span><\/a> — are just as bad as the requirements Georgia just imposed. But many of the provisions in Georgia\u2019s law <\/span>are being characterized as unprecedented<\/span><\/a> and provisions handing Republicans control over elections are seriously alarming.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The bill itself limits access to voting in at least <\/span>16 different ways<\/span><\/a> and, most alarming, gives Republican lawmakers in the state extremely deep and wide control over how elections are run and <\/span>who is allowed to vote<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In claiming that, for instance, <\/span>the bill expands access<\/span><\/a>, Republicans like Kemp are trying to pull the wool over the public\u2019s eyes. They appear to be attempting to <\/span>hide the fact<\/span><\/a> that the bill and <\/span>hundreds of others<\/span><\/a> across the country seek to limit voting access.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And while Republicans attempt to obscure the truth about the voting bills, Donald Trump, who is still <\/span>in some ways<\/span><\/a> the de facto leader of the party, said on Tuesday that the voter suppression bill <\/span>doesn\u2019t go far enough<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s influence still does, indeed, underlie the whole operation. Political observers have noted that the very fact that the racist vote-suppressing lines in the bill are debated is a concession to Trump\u2019s lies about election fraud. \u201cThe conversation is something like the mid-2000s debate over whether torture works,\u201d wrote University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket <\/span>on Twitter<\/span><\/a>. \u201cIt basically doesn\u2019t, but to even have that debate is to have surrendered something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To some extent, the bill has achieved part of what Trump and the Republicans have set out to do, which is not just to control elections and skew their results more toward Republicans, but also to control the narrative on elections themselves. For instance, those in the center and on the left are <\/span>debating<\/span><\/a> how elections in Georgia will be affected by a law that makes handing out food and water to people waiting in line to vote illegal. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the right gets to perpetuate the myth that they are the party concerned about election fraud, which is <\/span>close to nonexistent<\/span><\/a>, while getting everyone to implicitly acknowledge the big lie about a stolen election that compelled thousands of people to join an attack on the Capitol building in January.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kemp had stood up to Trump during the 2020 election, refusing to bow to Trump\u2019s attempts to get the results of the election overturned. But after <\/span>months of relentless attacks<\/span><\/a> from the right after Georgia voted for Joe Biden, Kemp is now defending his party\u2019s law to suppress voting. Still, Trump singled out Kemp in his statement on Tuesday claiming that the law <\/span>didn\u2019t go far enough<\/span><\/a> in suppressing the vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

The larger right-wing strategy that underlies even Trump\u2019s lies about election fraud, however, is their <\/span>long-running attempt<\/span><\/a> to rig elections in their own favor. Trump was just incendiary enough to give them the freedom to <\/span>say it out loud<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Latest \u2013 Truthout<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Georgia<\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans are making easily debunked claims about the new voter law in attempts to pull the wool over people\u2019s eyes.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4748,405,4,276,1231,3668],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110075,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110074\/revisions\/110075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}