The White House is staying mum on whether President Biden regrets characterizing Georgia’s election reform law as “Jim Crow 2.0” after state election officials reported record turnout in early voting for the November midterms.
The president was among many Democrats last year who criticized Georgia’s Republican-passed Election Integrity Act as a right-wing attempt to suppress Black votes. In October 2021, Biden described the law as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.” In January of this year, the president described the law as “Jim Crow 2.0.”
The controversy ultimately resulted in Major League Baseball pulling the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta’s Truist Park.
President Biden speaks about infrastructure investments in Los Angeles, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
The Department of Justice also filed a lawsuit against the Georgia law, though 15 months after filing, the DOJ and the White House have no update on the status of the legal action.
Despite Democrats claiming the voting law would suppress the vote, Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer in the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State, announced on Twitter Monday that 2022 early voting shattered records.
WARNOCK PUSHES GEORGIA VOTING SUPPRESSION CLAIMS, DESPITE VOTERS SHATTERING TURNOUT RECORDS
“Our elections team has reviewed the initial early vote numbers for Day 1 and we know we are north of 125,000,” Sterling tweeted. “This dwarfs the previous record of 72k from the 2018 midterm 1st day of early voting. We will have exact numbers in the morning.”
Hours earlier, Sterling had tweeted, “As of 4:15 we have seen over 100,000 Georgians cast their votes early. This blows away the previous midterm 1st day record of approximately 72,000 and we have lots of voting to go today.”
President Joe Biden gives a speech before designating Camp Hale as a national monument on Oct. 12, 2022, in Red Cliff, Colorado. ( Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)
Conservatives seized on the news on Twitter. NewsBusters associate editor Nick Fondacaro shared a “CBS Evening News” clip acknowledging the turnout and mocked it, tweeting, “And yet the liberal media still claims there’s ‘vOtEr SuPpReSsIoN’ and ‘jIm CrOwN[sic] 2.0.’”
Conservative radio host Larry O’Connor shared a local Fox affiliate’s story on the record-breaking turnout and commented, “’Jim Crow 2.0’ UPDATE!”
The Spectator contributing editor Stephen L. Miller shared Sterling’s tweet and captioned it, “Jim Crow 2.0.”
The White House declined to comment on whether Biden regretted his Jim Crow remarks when reached by Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
Among the Election Integrity Act’s changes were preventing government agencies from mailing applications unsolicited, requiring the use of driver’s licenses or some other form of photo ID instead of signature-matching to verify identity in absentee ballot applications, and codifying ballot drop boxes into law. It mandated precincts hold at least 17 days of early voting and left in place no-excuse absentee voting, while shortening the window to apply for ballots to 67 days.
Stacey Abrams speaks during the Essence Festival of Culture on July 2, 2022, in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Essence)
Georgia gubernatorial Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, a prominent critic of the Georgia election law, previously pushed back against claims that voter turnout proves it does not suppress Black voters.
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“We know that increased turnout has nothing to do with suppression,” Abrams said in May. “Suppression is about whether or not you make it difficult for voters to access the ballot. And in Georgia, we know difficulty has been put in place for too many Georgians who want to vote by mail, who had to figure out a calendar of applying just early enough but not too late, who had to have what signatures so they could print things out, take a picture, upload. We know that across the state, counties have taken advantage of county election boards that shifted their dynamic.”
Fox News’ Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.
