ONE OF the most outrageous political falsehoods told by Democrats in recent years was that the changes made to Georgia's election law in 2021 were intended to make it more difficult for people to vote and in particular to disenfranchise Black citizens. From President Biden on down, Democrats relentlessly characterized the new rules, which were passed by Georgia's majority-Republican Legislature and signed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp, as a nakedly racist gambit to revive the hateful bigotry of the pre-civil rights South.
The new law, Biden repeated again and again, was "Jim Crow on steroids" and "Jim Crow 2.0." Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, layering election denial on top of the slander, called Kemp "the Republican who is sitting in Stacey Abrams's chair" and said his goal was to "take Georgia back to Jim Crow." The Southern Poverty Law Center characterized the new law as "old Jim Crow, wrapped up in a new package."
Yet Kemp insisted all along that the changes would expand access to the ballot, not constrict it, and he was right. When Georgians voted in their state's first primary election under the new rules, the early voting turnout broke every previous record. During the subsequent November general election, voter enthusiasm was again off the charts. When researchers at the University of Georgia surveyed voters statewide after the 2022 midterm election, they found that more than 96 percent of Black voters reported having an "excellent" or "good" experience when they voted; 99 percent said they felt safe while waiting to cast their ballot; and 99.5 percent said they encountered no problem while voting.
That wasn't a one-off. This year Georgia not only matched its previous performance, it surpassed it.
 Voter stickers at the North Cobb Senior Center in Acworth, Ga., during early voting last month. |
"Georgia has seen a record number of Black voters cast ballots during the early voting period," reported The Atlanta Voice on Nov. 1. "Just over one million Black Georgians voted before Election Day, according to data from the secretary of state's office. ... The early voting period ended with nearly four million Georgians having cast ballots," a figure that dwarfs "any other records that were previously set."
Early voting drove turnout to an all-time high. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday that a record-busting 5.3 million Georgia voters participated in this year's election, shattering the previous high set four years ago. An estimated 68 percent of eligible voters in the state participated this year, higher than the national turnout rate of 65 percent. According to data compiled by the University of Florida Election Lab, that means that when ballot access and voter turnout are tallied, Georgia ranked 17th-highest among the 50 states and District of Columbia.
In a speech from the White House Rose Garden last week, Biden called on the country to "bring down the temperature" after the intense and bitter presidential campaign. Biden has frequently called for an end to divisive rhetoric from Republicans and Donald Trump backers; rarely if ever has he called out those on his side of the aisle whose political language has been equally outrageous. Biden's own words have been pretty incendiary at times. He said at one point that Trump was using "language you heard in Nazi Germany" and in an intemperate comment a week before the election, he described Trump supporters as "the only garbage I see floating out there."
It may be too much to expect the president to retract anything he has said about Trump specifically. But if he sincerely wishes to cool the overheated atmosphere of the past few years, he might start by publicly taking back his slanders about Georgia's election law. Nearly four years of data have now proven conclusively that there was no attempt to prevent Georgians from voting. The "Jim Crow" line of attack was sheer racial demagoguery with no basis in fact.
Biden ought to say so and apologize for his role in promoting such an ugly libel. Not just because it would be the right thing to do but because it would set an example of how a mature and moral leader can make amends for contributing to the rancor and meanness of our civil discourse. Such a demonstration of contrition by the outgoing president might give the incoming president something to think about and — who knows? — perhaps even emulate.
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Forget about it
In Arguable a few weeks ago I discussed the National Popular Vote Compact, a scheme to bypass the Electoral College by having states agree to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide, rather than the candidate who carries the state. So far, 17 states plus the District of Columbia have joined, enough to control 209 electoral votes. By its terms, the compact will go into effect once enough states have joined to bring the Electoral College total to 270, the threshold to elect a president.
Advocates of the popular vote compact have always described it in high-minded terms. They say it is about "democracy" and "one-person-one-vote" and "fixing a broken system" and "voter equality." They never acknowledge that it was devised to prevent a Republican candidate from becoming president without winning a popular vote majority. But that of course was its real purpose, which is why the only states that have signed on are those where the governor and legislature are Democratic.
After last week's election, I think it is safe to assume that Democrats won't be lobbying for the popular vote compact anymore. Because if it had already taken effect, all but two of the states that went for Kamala Harris would now be obliged to award their electoral votes to the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance. Only New Hampshire and Virginia (and a single congressional district in Nebraska) would show up as blue on the presidential map. Trump would own 520 electoral votes; Harris would wind up with just 18.
 The popular vote compact promoted by Democrats would have massively exaggerated the scope of Trump's victory. |
This is one of the things I intensely dislike about politicians: the way they ardently promote a supposed nonpartisan "reform" that just happens to benefit their own political party. But as soon as the political winds shift, they lose all appetite for the change they had claimed was so urgent.
Abolition of the Senate filibuster is another example. For most of the past four years, nearly every Democratic senator has advocated abolishing or weakening the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. With only the barest control over the evenly split chamber, Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Chuck Schumer of New York, and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire have maintained that the 60-vote rule is a threat to democracy, an obstacle to majority rule, even a holdover from the nation's racist past. The filibuster survived only because two centrist Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, refused to go along with the rest of their caucus.
But now that Democrats have lost their narrow hold on the Senate, pulling the plug on the filibuster will be the last thing they want. Their indignant complaints about how the filibuster "stinks" (to quote Warren) will evaporate. There was never anything principled about their opposition to the rule, no matter how loftily they expressed it. They were against the filibuster because it prevented them from getting their way. Now they will vigorously defend it to keep the new Republican majority from getting its way.
Republicans can be just as cynical.
For years, the GOP resisted legislation designed to automatically enroll unregistered voters, to authorize weeks of early voting, and to make vote-by-mail a universal option. In 2020 and 2022, they urged their supporters to be skeptical of early and mail-in voting and to cast their ballots on Election Day. They made principled and practical arguments that I agreed with. I still think those arguments are sound, but Republicans no longer make them. Why? Because they learned this year that — unlike in the past — marginal and inactive citizens who can be induced to vote are now much more likely to favor Republican candidates. With that, all their old concerns about the security of mailed ballots and early-voting drop boxes vanished. Now Republicans love early voting and would scream bloody murder at any attempt to roll it back.
As much as I might wish it were otherwise, politics is not for the principled. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have any permanent bedrock values. Apart from any other consideration, the two major parties exist for one overriding reason: to win elections and acquire power.
From force of habit, most of us are used to thinking that each party embodies a core philosophy and that they strive to get candidates elected in order to implement that philosophy. But the truth is closer to the reverse: Parties will sharply adjust their principles in order to win elections. Is the GOP the party of protectionism or free trade? Are Democrats for more immigration or less? Which party champions across-the-board tax cuts? Which is for muscular intervention abroad? On all those issues, the two major parties have changed over the years, always shifting in the direction that they believe will attract more votes. If on matters of such moment they can prove so inconsistent, why should we expect them to stand fast on procedural matters, like the filibuster or the Electoral College or early voting?
For Team Red and Team Blue, the goal is to win. Everything else is secondary, starting with consistency.
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The Last Line
"You have called us, and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide
To lay us down, for freedom's sake, our brother's bones beside;
Or from foul treason's savage group to wrench the murderous blade,
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade;
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before:
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!" — James Sloan Gibbons, "Three Hundred Thousand More" (1862)
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Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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