Fox News contributor Alveda King who rarely, if ever, lets a TV hit go by without mentioning that she’s Martin Luther King’s niece, probably sent him rolling in the grave when she argued on behalf of Georgia’s new voter suppression law.
Without providing any evidence, King insisted that “voter suppression has occurred through the ages on both sides of the aisle,” and that Georgia’s new law is “not an effort for voter suppression. This is simply trying to regulate and get a hand on what even happened on the last election because we had so many dead people voting, people voting twice, people mailing in and then showing up and voting. So many things were happening.”
This is a load of BS. Georgia’s presidential election was audited and no voter fraud was found. Furthermore, Donald Trump’s own attorney general agreed. Out of 62 lawsuits Trump filed challenging the election, he lost 61. The only victory had nothing to do with voter fraud. The Georgia law, on the other hand, "will limit ballot access, potentially confuse voters and give more power to Republican lawmakers," The New York Times concluded in its exhaustive analysis.
Host Neil Cavuto let the falsehoods stand. He moved on to note that Bernice King, MLK’s daughter, was among those saying that the Georgia law disrespects her father’s work. “They’re not saying it’s Jim Crow-ish, they seem to be saying it’s close,” Cavuto said. “What do you say?”
King boasted about having marched for voters’ rights – then went on to support restricting them. “Without appropriate regulations, you do not have the fair voting process,” she claimed. “Right now, we have got some serious voting irregularities that also have to be addressed, and I notice that Bernice is not addressing that.”
That was too much, even for Cavuto. He asked if the law “was based on something that to a lot of us has proven to be incorrect, if not a lie, that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia to the point that it turned the election and robbed Donald Trump of a win. Do you believe that?”
In short, yes, she does.
King called herself a friend of Trump and, with a straight face, said, “Now, he’s moving ahead, continuing to serve the country.” She didn’t provide any specifics in that regard. “I don’t think that we are retaliating against what may or may not have happened with the last election. It’s time for an overhaul of the election, period, whoever the president happens to be.”
“A lot of times I’ve seen voter fraud in Georgia, myself,” King asserted, when she was a state legislator. “So, there are all kinds of shenanigans in Georgia with voting,” she added.
Cavuto pressed. “Did it influence the election in 2020?”
“I actually believe it did because there’s so many people who would say to me, 'I’m voting for President Trump ,don’t tell anybody, shhhhh, shhh. And I believe more people actually voted for President Trump than we actually saw here in Georgia. I’m very convinced that it is true."
She even said it’s possible the Georgia law may be “too little, too late.”
Rather than debunk her disinformation, Cavuto closed the segment by saying affectionately, "Always stirring that pot, Alveda.”
You can watch it below, from the April 1, 2021 Your World.
The law presents a false premise and a false equivalency at its very start, where it says that they’re concerned about allegations of voter suppression and of voter fraud. Supposedly, this noxious restriction law is the solution. In reality, the voter suppression was quite real, including Brian Kemp deliberately dumping tens of thousands of Georgians off the voter roles to keep them from voting in 2020. (Stacey Abrams countered this by her efforts to make sure all GA voters checked their statuses and re-registered, plus registering a lot of new voters) The “fraud” allegations were flat-out lies, promoted by the Pence White House and angry Right Wingers who wanted to sow discord.
As Bemused notes, the law hands over control of the process to the Republicans in the state legislature, allowing them to appoint a crony as the Chair of the State Election Board, and allowing their now totally-owned SEB to arbitrarily remove up to 4 county voting superintendents (such as in Fulton County) and replace them with loyal cronies as well. Further, the law makes it more complicated and more difficult for absentee voters and leaves them with significantly less time to apply and to complete their ballots, if they even get them. The law also makes it open season for angry Right Wingers to challenge pretty much every voter they want, so that they could throw out tens of thousands of votes from Atlanta and swing any election to the Republican.
Added grace notes: The law also requires the polling station counters to continue counting without any break to go home and sleep. (This is revenge for the counters having retreated due to the water leak and then to sleep a couple of times) The law blocks the ability of the SEB to impose emergency rules (such as for a pandemic) unless there is an “imminent threat” that goes undefined – idea being that a pandemic would not be considered “imminent” but more of an overall issue. And there’s a really fun section about arbitrarily switching voting precincts and polling locations with the only notice being a small sign at the now dis-used location. So that voters who don’t have this information show up and find out they can’t vote at their normal location and then hunt for a new one, only to be repeatedly told they’re in the wrong place, and then after a few rounds of this, finally being told they can only vote IF they sign more documentation and take even more time. Again – the point being to stop them from wanting to vote in the first place.
To my mind, the most dangerous part of the GA bill is the part that undermines the integrity of future elections by handing so much control of the electoral process to the party currently in power. Today, that party is the GOP. Essentially, what Trump had asked Raffensperger (sp?) and Sterling to do after the November 2020 election was not legal at the time but it will be the next time. In other words, the bill voted by the GOP of GA lays the groundwork for rigging future elections, by the GOP as the party currently in power.
On another front, the furore over the distribution of food and water to people waiting in line to vote ignores what I feel is the real scandal, namely the fact that people have to wait so long to vote. The fact that the longest lines occur in areas that usually vote for the other party reveals a clear intent to suppress voting in those areas. And this is happening in a country that takes considerable pride in being a beacon of democracy. GOPers with little contact with the outside world simply don’t realise how bad that looks abroad. Only tyrants and dictators are pleased.
The bill does absolutely nothing to reduce those waiting times: the total number of days/hours polls are open is surreptitiously reduced and access to mail-in ballots is curtailed. It allows electoral officials to further suppress voting by reducing the number of drop-boxes and placing them out of reach, within buildings, for the greater part of a 24-hour day. Instead of issuing photo ID automatically – say during registration – it makes this yet another hurdle for hard-working folks. The idea is to discourage people from even thinking of voting for the other party … despicable and totally un-American.
*More importantly, however, as noted by Kevin, the bill hands control over the election process to the State legislature currently in power, effectively allowing it to stay in power indefinitely. Bye, bye, democracy. *
The ban on distributing food and water is petty and mean, but it is easily circumvented by packing a picnic lunch. Should that happen, it would’t surprise me one bit were the GOP to decide to prohibit people from nipping out to take a leak, from bringing a card table and chairs, or from wearing a baseball cap in any colour but red.
You’ll see that the language says nothing about candidate logos. In subsection (a), there’s prior language about not passing out campaign material, and then the new language adds a provision that “nor shall any person give…any money or gifts, including but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector.” There are further subsections within (a) that say that this applies within 150 feet of the building, within the building itself and WITHIN 25 FEET OF ANY VOTER STANDING IN LINE TO VOTE. (An exception is allowed if you’re in a closed office in that area where the voters cannot see or hear you) So your incorrect summary indicates that you yourself have not read or comprehended this material.
Your discussion of the 5pm-7pm provision is incorrect – you’re misunderstanding the language in Section which is actually in Section 34 about voters who show up in the wrong precinct. The language is intended to tell those voters they have to go to a different polling place unless it’s after 5pm and they fill out legal paperwork to attest to their situation.
The Saturday and Sunday voting scenario is not as you have misunderstood it. The new language, found in Section 28, limits early voting to either 4 Monday-Fridays prior or just 2 Monday-Fridays prior with 9-5 hours (limited down from the “regular business hours” language that would have taken it to 7pm or later). It also discusses having Saturday voting from 9-5 on one or two of the Saturdays prior to the election. Sunday voting is not mandated – it’s only allowed if the local registrar chooses, so this will never happen in a district where Republicans are controlling the situation. There is nothing in the language about telling the Republicans “keep voting open from 5pm to 7pm and on Sunday”.
I noted many other interesting provisions in this bill – such as Section 5’s effective removal of the Secretary of State from the State Election Board (he’s reduced to an ex-officio nonvoting member), and the creation of a new Chairperson, who would be selected by the General Assembly. (This Chairperson is intended to be “non-partisan” but that is only determined by their having not run or campaigned or given money to a partisan campaign in 2 years. Meaning that Matt Gaetz could leave office this year, stay out of direct GOP campaigning for 2 years while punditing on Newsmax, and then be appointed Chair of the Georgia State Election Board in 2023, just in time for the next presidential election…) I also noted Section 6 allowing the new SEB to replace up to 4 local superintendents whenever they like (ie Fulton County’s superintendent…) and install their own person. I noted Section 15 (a) allowing each angry Right Winger in Georgia to challenge the voting rights of an unlimited number of their fellow citizens – people who would then be told via mail to show up for a hearing that might be only 3 days after the notice, and if the mail continues to be as unpredictable as it has been since Pence gutted the USPS, they might not find out they were disenfranchised until they showed up to vote.
And there’s more, much more, in this unfortunate attempt to suppress the voting public in Georgia. And it’s clear that angry Right Wingers, as expressed yesterday by Kevin Williamson in National Review, would prefer to have fewer voters – just the ones who vote the Right way.
I strongly recommend you actually take some time to read the Georgia law before posting uninformed comments like the one you just inflicted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-kemp-election/2020/12/13/d8adc202-3b37-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html
The voter suppression aspects of the law are serious enough, but – for me – the real scandal is that the law gives state-level lawmakers the power to overturn elections. That’s precisely what Trump asked the GA election officials to do. I do appreciate the fact that they refused to play that game but wonder how they can remain silent, now, when their integrity is at stake.
I’m with doors17 in being perplexed about Trump’s obsession with GA.