Where Do Georgia Republicans Go to Get Their Apology?

When Georgia Republicans passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021 — signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp in March of last year — the commanding heights of institutional progressivism quickly set about laying the groundwork for one of the most hysterical, delusional, and cynically dishonest narratives in recent American political history. In unison, many of the nation’s most powerful institutions immediately determined that, in the words of President Biden, the Georgia election law made “Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.” (Mr. Eagle was not available for comment at the time this piece went to print). Progressive power-players like the ACLU, the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, followed by the U.S. Department of Justice itself, filed legal challenges, spurred on by the emerging conventional wisdom that the law was a racist attempt to suppress minority votes. In a whopping two-fer of unfounded racism allegations and demonstrably false stolen-election claims — the kind that we were reliably informed were an existential threat to democracy — Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted:

In spite of the utter deficit of evidence, the claim that the Georgia voting law was a racially motivated voter-suppression bill quickly became an entrenched dogma in much of elite American life — the kind of thing that was accepted as an irrefutable and obvious fact, with no need for further investigation. The New York Times gravely warned that “the new law will, in particular, curtail ballot access for voters in booming urban and suburban counties, home to many Democrats.” Under heavy pressure from left-wing activist groups and their sympathizers in the legacy media, some of Georgia’s largest employers, including Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, published statements condemning the legislation — echoing the line that, in the words of Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, the law “makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.” In his first speech on the Senate floor, Georgia’s newly minted Senator Raphael Warnock called the law “Jim Crow in new clothes.” MLB pulled its All-Star Game and 2021 draft out of Atlanta in protest. 

It was all a lie. A malicious, objectively and demonstrably false lie. This was evident from the outset, but the burden of proof has grown to overwhelming proportions since the surge in early voting in the May primaries. As Rich Lowry noted at the time:

On the Republican side, according to the secretary of state’s office, there were 453,929 early votes and 29,220 absentee votes so far this primary season (the absentee votes will keep coming in through Election Day on Tuesday). This is compared with just 153,264 early votes and 14,795 absentee voters during the last, pre-pandemic midterm, in 2018.

The Democrats have seen a similar surge. In 2022, there were 337,245 early votes and 31,704 absentee votes so far, compared with only 134,542 early votes and 13,051 absentee votes in 2018.

As Jim Geraghty has pointed out, the early vote among minorities in particular is up markedly.

It never made sense that the Georgia law was going to stop anyone from voting. The provisions that the Left complained about were clearly innocuous.

Now that we’re just over two weeks out from the actual 2022 election, record-breaking early voting numbers have hammered the final nail into the coffin of the Left’s Big Lie. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein reported this morning:

Yesterday, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger broke down the details in a press release:

Georgia voters continued to hit record breaking turnout on day four of Early Voting. As of Friday morning, just under 520K Georgia voters have cast their ballot during in-person Early Voting, with 122,149 showing up on Thursday, October 20th. Thursday’s total marks a 53% increase from day four of 2018 midterm Early Voting and is only 25% less than the total of day four of Early Voting in the 2020 Presidential election.

Georgia has had record Early Voting turnout since the first day of Early Voting this year, surging to nearly twice the number on the first day of Early Voting in 2018. Yesterday’s total continues to surpass the previous midterm Early Voting records made in the 2018 midterm election, and the cumulative total continues to remain within striking distance of 2020 Presidential election levels.

“Georgia is the Early Voting state,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “Counties have done a tremendous effort in getting their information online and on the airwaves so that voters understand the opportunities in front of them to cast their ballot safely and securely – and most importantly – easily.”

Reports of long lines were rare, with some lines in the metro areas being reported. No substantial delays were reported yesterday. Early Voting turnout is expected to increase during the last week of Early Voting.

There is simply no argument that the backers of the “Jim Crow” smear can make to counter this raw, empirical evidence of their dishonesty. Conservatives have been pointing this out for months, but it bears repeating, given the unlikelihood that any of the powerful voices who bolstered the myth will admit their error — or be held accountable for it by their like-minded counterparts in the media. In our moment of extreme partisan division and increasingly heated rhetoric, it can be easy to be desensitized to the ludicrous nature of the things that partisans like Joe Biden say on a routine basis. But we should recognize the magnitude of what happened: The sitting president of the United States alleged that his political opponents were worse than segregationists based on a verifiable falsehood, and many of the very same self-styled voices of reason and decency that had spent the Trump years waxing poetic about the dangers of incendiary political rhetoric just . . . shrugged.