Imagine my surprise when I read my (online) newspaper this morning and ran across this. An article “explaining” the new Georgia voting law. Nice, I thought. Let people know what’s inside the law, why people are upset, and the reasons we’re pressuring corporations to get them involved.
It started out OK, the usual “both sides say” baloney …., and then got into the actual law “top issues”. They started with the state being able to take local control which is, IMHO, the worst part of the law. Except, the way it was written, it seemed like a good thing!
Much of the work administering elections in Georgia is handled by the state’s 159 counties. The law gives the State Election Board new powers to intervene in county election offices and to remove and replace local election officials. That has led to concerns that the Republican-controlled state board could exert more influence over the administration of elections, including the certification of county results.
So far, not bad, right? Then, they continue:
One target for intervention could be Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that contains most of Atlanta. The heavily populated county has been plagued by problems, including long lines, and it is often singled out by Republican officials. Under the law, the board could intervene in up to four counties at a time and install a temporary superintendent with the ability to hire and fire personnel, including election directors and poll officers.
That’s it. That’s all. 2 paragraphs that make it sound like a good thing for the state to come in and take over local elections. Like the whole purpose is to go in and take care of those long lines to vote problem and NOT the ability to overturn election results they don’t like.
Agrhhhhh!
And then they move on to the whole can’t give water to people in line section and similarly make it sound like a not-so-bad thing. They end with:
Polling places would be able to, but not required to, set up self-serve water dispensers for voters.
They make it seem like election officials providing water dispensers is made possible by this bill.
Item by item in this article which might just as well have been written by Republicans. The new, outrageous voting law is made to seem benign, even friendly. It’s something I’ve come to expect to in my local newspaper that has routinely overlooked the awfulness of Scott Walker and Ron Johnson to report only good things about them (no, Wisconsinites don’t know about RoJo and his never ending series of conspiracy theories, but they do know about all the whining he’s doing about being confronted).
Then I looked at the authors — not the Milwaukee Journal’ Sentinels usual Republican friendly writers, but the Associated Press. That means that THIS STORY and all the BS it contains is being circulated nation-wide. Readers are going to be left wondering what all the fuss is about because the law is being whitewashed.
Read the article — it’s short and tell me if I’m wrong to be boiling mad over it. Perhaps I just woke up on the wrong side of the recliner this morning….