Rich Lowry of National Review Online minces no words when he examines Democrats’ claims about “voter suppression.”
President Joe Biden is so committed to bipartisan cooperation and fact-based governance that he’s launched an ignorant and incendiary attack on the new Georgia voting law.
Biden says the new law is “Jim Crow in the 21st century” and “an un-American law to deny people the right to vote.”
It’s now practically mandatory for Democrats to launch such unhinged broadsides. Elizabeth Warren, accusing Georgia governor Brian Kemp of having stolen his 2018 election victory over Democratic activist Stacey Abrams (a poisonous myth), tweeted, “The Republican who is sitting in Stacey Abrams’ chair just signed a despicable voter suppression bill into law to take Georgia back to Jim Crow.”
Anyone making this charge in good faith either doesn’t understand the hideousness of Jim Crow or the provisions of the Georgia law.
The old Jim Crow was billy clubs and fire hoses; the alleged new Jim Crow is asking people to write a driver’s license number on their absentee-ballot envelopes.
The old Jim Crow was poll taxes; the new Jim Crow is expanding weekend voting.
The old Jim Crow was disenfranchising voters en masse based on their race; the new Jim Crow is limiting ballot drop boxes to places they can’t be tampered with.
It’s hard to believe that one real voter is going to be kept from voting by the new rules.
To better ensure the security, the law requires that voters provide a driver’s license or state ID number to apply for a ballot and one of those numbers (or the last four digits of a Social Security number) when returning the ballot.
The law narrows the window for requesting absentee ballots, although still allows plenty of time. A voter can request a ballot as early as eleven weeks prior to an election or as late as eleven days prior. …
