A fact-checker with left-leaning Washington Post reviewed Biden’s recent comments bashing a new election bill passed in Georgia after he claimed it was “racist” a remnant of “Jim Crow” and seeks to disenfranchise minority voters. Liberal fact-checker Glenn Kessler found that some of President Biden’s remarks on the bill are false and the legislation actually serves to expand voting measures across the state- which is exactly what Republican Governor Brian Kemp said it seeks to do.
Kessler focused on two claims made by Biden last week that the bill purposefully seeks to limit polling hours so that working Georgians can’t easily vote after work.
On March 25, Biden said “What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work.”
The next day Biden falsely claimed, “Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.”
The Daily Wire reports:
“On Election Day in Georgia, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing in the new law changes those rules,” The Post reported. “However, the law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.”
“One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally codifying Sunday voting hours as optional,” Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting said. “Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum. If you live in a larger metropolitan county, you might not notice a change. For most other counties, you will have an extra weekend day, and your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer.”
Kessler writes that The Washington Post has “no clue” where Biden got the idea that the ordinary workers would have their voting opportunities limited because Georgia would “end voting at five o’clock.” The report explains that the law makes specific what normal business hours are—from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.—in part because “some rural county election offices only worked part time during the week, not a full eight-hour day, so the shift to more specific times makes it clear they must be open every weekday for at least eight hours.”
The report notes that Fulton County, which is a deep blue county, “set early-voting hours at 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on most weekdays and two Saturdays, though the last weekdays had 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. voting hours,” and “voting was allowed on two Sundays between 12 p.m. and 6 p.m.” The report said that Fulton County “could set the exact same hours for in-person early voting — or expand them from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.”
Clearly, President Biden has not read the bill before issuing his blatantly false remarks.
