Biden DOJ Declares War on Honest Elections
In the first of what he promises to be many lawsuits, AG Merrick Garland goes after Georgia’s modest electoral reform law.
On Friday, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice officially declared war on honest elections. It did so by way of a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Merrick Garland against Georgia’s recently passed voting reform act, also known as Senate Bill 202. And the AG vowed that this suit is only the start.
“The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow,” said a disingenuous Garland. Apparently, no one told him that we live in a republic, not a democracy. Undeterred, he rambled on: “This lawsuit is the first step of many we are taking to ensure that all eligible voters can cast a vote; that all lawful votes are counted; and that every voter has access to accurate information.”
It’s evidently worth noting that Georgia’s law does exactly these things.
Still, we suppose it was only a matter of time. After all, at the time of its passage back in March, Joe Biden himself called Georgia’s modest effort to clean up its electoral act “un-American” and “an atrocity.” And someone must’ve also told him to toss out the Jim Crow smear as often as possible, because he called it “Jim Crow on steroids” and “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” and said it “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.” Whatever that means.
Biden also made other patently false claims about the law — for example, that it would “end voting at five o'clock when working people are just getting off work” or “ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.” Taken together, these ill-informed attacks were a disgraceful bit of demagoguery, and they ultimately earned him four Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s lefty “fact-checker.”
The central claim of the lawsuit, according to Biden’s DOJ, is that it’s “intended to deny or abridge the right of Black Georgians to vote.” As the Wall Street Journal editorial board writes, “The federal complaint is as transparently political as its argument is unconvincing. When Covid hit in the run-up to Georgia’s 2020 primary, state officials decided to send every active voter an unsolicited application for a mail ballot. The new law bans this practice.”
As proof of its racial animus, the feds point to an interview in which Georgia House Speaker David Ralston says that massive bulk-mail balloting could “drive up turnout” and be “extremely devastating to Republicans.”
And Ralston did indeed say that, but he also said that the Democrats’ radical upending of electoral processes threatened the security of the vote as well as the privacy of the voter. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was quick to respond:
This lawsuit is born out of the lies and misinformation the Biden administration has pushed against Georgia’s Election Integrity Act from the start. Joe Biden, Stacey Abrams, and their allies tried to force an unconstitutional elections power grab through Congress — and failed. Now, they are weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice to carry out their far-left agenda that undermines election integrity and empowers federal government overreach in our democracy.
George Washington University law professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley called the case “dubious,” noting that the law “has great overlap with other states like [Biden’s home state of] Delaware.” In addition, Turley correctly noted that voter identification laws are now overwhelmingly popular with voters — so much so that even race-baiters like Stacey Abrams now favor them.
In short, the Biden DOJ may live to regret these racially incendiary actions.