We need to remind all those who were garnering headline space the past few years over the Georgia voting integrity law. It was a long list and lengthy slog of listening to public posturing and media hectoring from a varied group of voices who consistently displayed a dichotomy of outrage and knowledge; basically, the louder they were, the more misinformed they displayed being at the time.
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola did its share of chirping. Delta Airlines, with its hub in ATL, felt the need to chime in. Major League Baseball made the move to yank the 2021 All-Star Game in the name of racial sensitivity, meaning numerous POC business owners saw a significant business loss as the game was placed in the lily-white state of Colorado. Hollywood did its share of carping, with Will Smith moving a production from the state. Resident Tyler Perry called for the DOJ to step in. The Atlanta Falcons would have been wise to pass on making a comment. Stadium sponsor Mercedes Benz gave a low-octane response, as did many other corporations.
Politically there was no shortage of histrionics from the Democrats. President Joe Biden was the most prominent, lending high dudgeon from the highest office. Biden, at turns, called the law's passage "outrageous," "an atrocity," "a blatant attack on the Constitution," "Jim Crow on steroids," and (a personal favorite) "Jim Eagle." Then there was the constant drumbeat of media coverage, a persistent throb of doom about the law that was all but assuring that Georgia would be cast back to a pre-Civil War era where blacks and possibly even women would be denied the right to cast a ballot.
Except – every single one of these melodramatic harpies has been proven to be one hundred percent incorrect.
The numbers of early voting in the Peach State have not been reduced to a trickle of entitled whites, pushing their privileged candidates into cloistered precincts hidden away in GOP enclaves. Georgia is not only seeing strong crowds at the polls, they are experiencing never-before-seen turnout.
“First day of early voting sets turnout record for Georgia primary”
— Tribune Content Agency (@TribuneAgency) May 3, 2022
from @ajc's @markniesse https://t.co/fUNz0u6GED
Those figures actually increased on Day 2.
Early voting turnout in Georgia's primary was even higher on Tuesday than any prior day, at 35,063. A total of 254,556 people have voted so far.
— Mark Niesse (@markniesse) May 11, 2022
Republican: 146,425
Democrat: 106,188
Nonpartisan: 1,943#gapol https://t.co/W5ZEJbLkN0
And it has only continued. The Voter Integrity Act has shown that while strengthening the oversight on ballots and the voting process, the access to early voting, absentee ballots, and other means of voting has become streamlined for the citizens. The irony is in seeing these reports coming from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which gave coverage to as much of the opposition voices as it could for over a year now.
This result also undermines one of the most prominent names in the Georgia Democratic Party, Stacey Abrams. She is currently running once again for the governorship, but her entire platform has been built on the myth that she was the rightful winner years ago and that she has been battling the integrity law because of its restrictive nature. Now, her clearly inaccurate claims have been exposed, much like when she had to backtrack excessively when the MLB pulled the All-Star game and she realized the economic hit it meant to her constituents.
Also hard hit today is a consortium of activist voting groups currently suing the state. Led by Democratic legal pyromaniac Marc Elias, the suit being brought by Vote.org, the Georgia Alliance of Retired Americans, and Priorities USA is declaring aspects of the new law are restrictive and discriminatory. Specifically, they are stating the requirement of a hand-written request for an absentee ballot will "unfairly disqualify voters, particularly Black and brown voters, from their constitutional right to vote."
Yes, they claim that asking for a signature is now racist. As the record turnout is showing, those black and brown people are not having much trouble voting these days. That means all these complaints about the Georgia law have been made by those who saw trouble with their manipulative voting tactics, so they had to resort to claims that the law was meant to limit access to the polls. In other words, they were wrong. In still other words – it means they were lying.