A growing number of black leaders across the U.S. are backing the requirement of voter ID and rejecting President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ claims that election integrity efforts like Georgia’s voter ID law hearken back to the days of the “Jim Crow” era.
Voters nationwide overwhelmingly support voter ID efforts. As CBN News reported, a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted earlier this month found 62 percent of Americans feel ID requirements don’t discriminate.
Democrats hold up the Georgia voting law as “exhibit A” in what they claim to be voter suppression. President Biden even called it “Jim Crow on steroids,” but other lawmakers and even the media have called Biden out for misstating facts about the law.
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“The President has claimed repeatedly that state-level debates over voting procedures are worse than Jim Crow or ‘Jim Crow on steroids.’ Nobody actually believes this. Nobody really thinks this current dispute comes anywhere near the horrific racist brutality of segregation,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said.
“It’s easier to vote in Georgia now, after the new law, than it is in Delaware now, the president’s home state,” he added.
The term “Jim Crow” refers to state and local laws in the segregated South that existed from after the Civil War until at least the mid-1960s. They restricted voting by requiring poll taxes or tests for Black voters, and they also restricted Black Americans’ employment, housing, and educational opportunities.
But even the Washington Post fact-checker gave Biden it’s worst rating on this issue – four Pinocchio’s – for falsely claiming that the Georgia law ends voting early so working people can’t vote.
The law’s supporters charge Democrats are playing politics, pointing out that it:
- expands early voting access in most counties,
- expands weekend voting to two Saturdays and potentially two Sundays,
- codifies drop-off balloting, which was a temporary measure for the 2020 elections,
- and requires a valid photo I.D. to request an absentee ballot.
Black Leaders Reject Biden’s ‘Jim Crow’ Claim
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson – the first black American to be elected Lieutenant Governor there – told JustTheNews.com there’s nothing wrong with asking voters for an ID to prove their identity, saying the Jim Crow claim is false.
“That black people can’t get an ID to vote — and quite frankly, a free ID, which the government has offered, to vote — is just absolute nonsense,” Robinson told Just the News. “And I reject that wholeheartedly. And I believe most of the people of North Carolina do as well.”
“I truly believe the number one thing that we need to do is to continue to preach the gospel that in order to secure our elections in order to maintain the integrity to vote, we need voter ID,” Robinson said.
Recently, 21 civil rights and other well-known black conservatives defended Georgia’s new election law in a letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, speaking out against Jim Crow accusations.
In an exclusive report, The Daily Signal published parts of the letter.
“It has become clear that even well-intentioned critics of the law simply have no idea what the law is,” the leaders wrote. “It is clear they have no idea how favorably Georgia’s new law compares with most other states—including President Biden’s home state of Delaware. And it is clear they have no idea that a majority of black voters across the country support the key provision under attack by critics—the simple requirement that voters be able to identify themselves when voting. This is the same simple requirement needed to pick up baseball tickets or board a plane—activities hardly as important as voting.”
Ken Blackwell, Ohio’s first African-American secretary of state, told JustTheNews.com the news media and even some companies have intentionally twisted the facts about Georgia’s new election law to make it look racist.
“You have the mainstream media, you know, initially trying to gaslight the American people, making those of us who see this as a very common-sense practical policy and procedure to be somewhat crazy or racist, and we’re not buying it,” Blackwell said.
“And look, this is what Major League Baseball, Coca Cola and Delta need to understand — that the American people are not going to sit back and take … the labeling of common-sense practice and ordinary hard-working people as being racist,” he added. “Too many people have put too much on the line to make sure that the integrity of our election system is in fact protected.”
Last week, U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), a former NFL star, testified before the Senate, pushing back against Biden’s claims about the Georgia law.
“What I find extremely offensive is the narrative from the left that Black people are not smart enough, not educated enough, not desirous enough of education to do what every other culture and race does in this country: get an ID,” Owens said. “True racism is this: It’s the projection of the Democratic Party on my proud race. It’s called the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
After Georgia passed the new election law, former gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams repeatedly claimed the law was racist. As CBN News reported, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred even moved the All-Star Game out of Atlanta after Biden misstated the facts about the law.
That decision backfired though, costing $100 million in potential revenue to Atlanta’s mostly black business community, according to JustTheNews.com.
‘A Majority of Black Americans Support Voter ID Laws’
Last week in a scathing op-ed published by Real Clear Politics, eight African-American leaders claimed the Black community supports voter ID, but white liberals have commandeered the issue.
“The data seems clear: A majority of Black Americans support voter ID laws,” the op-ed argued. They say, “opportunistic activists like Stacey Abrams pretend the entire Black community stands behind them and the radical Democrat Party,” by deploying an offensive narrative about Black people.
“Why do they pretend that Black people are either opposed to voter ID or, even more offensively, that Blacks are incapable of obtaining IDs?” the op-ed asked. “The answer is in part because the elites, most of whom are white, have enabled them, taking it upon themselves to determine who the “leaders” of the Black community are and ignoring anyone else who suggests differently.”
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN