Democrats insisted that the state made it hard to vote. Nobody told the voters.

I'm sick and tired of watching the minions being repressed!

Georgia Exposes the ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ Lie

Democrats insisted that the state made it hard to vote. Nobody told the voters.

Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ

Oct. 20, 2022 6:20 pm ET

Early voting began in Georgia this week, and the birthplace of “Jim Crow 2.0” is smashing turnout records. Democrats, the media and corporate America can address their letters of apology to the GOP-controlled statehouse.

By Tuesday evening, the end of Georgia’s second day of early voting, more than 291,700 people had voted either in person or absentee. That marked a 75.3% increase over the same moment in the 2018 midterm and a 3.3% rise from the second day of early voting in the 2020 presidential election. Midterms rarely match the enthusiasm of presidential contests.

President Biden told voters in Atlanta in January that Georgia’s election rules would “suppress your vote, to subvert our elections.” The state’s “Jim Crow 2.0” law was “insidious,” he said, urging his followers to “hate evil.” The solution, which congressional Democrats were then proposing, was a federal takeover of elections, which he said would be a victory of “democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice.”

It was among his more reckless speeches—a high bar—though only one part of the hysterical overreaction to Georgia’s modest changes. Major League Baseball stripped Georgia of the All-Star Game; the CEOs of Atlanta-headquartered Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola stumbled in with moral condemnations; the Justice Department filed a lawsuit; the media lost its wig. Georgia Republicans patiently explained that their reforms were designed to increase both ballot access and security. They were right, and lucky for Georgia voters, they stood firm.

The good news isn’t confined to the Peach State. The numbers everywhere are humiliating outfits like the liberal Brennan Center, which spent the past two years wailing about states that passed laws “that will make it harder for Americans to vote.” That claim was already undercut by 2021 elections and 2022 primaries that featured high turnout.

Now we move to November. The University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project reports that, as of Thursday, some five million people have already voted in the 2022 general election. In a story earlier in the week, when the numbers were lower, project director and University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald told ABC News that turnout was higher than usual. “It’s clear that we are above the 2018 midterm at the same point in time in states where we have comparable data,” he said. He suggested a high-turnout election like 2018, which was “the highest midterm turnout rate since 1914.”

Leading the pack—accounting for about one-fifth of all early votes cast so far—is Florida. The Sunshine State passed its own 2021 voting reform, which Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist called “pathetic,” the Brennan Center labeled “sweeping voter suppression,” and liberal activists (unsuccessfully) sued to stop. Then there’s Ohio. Axios reported on a study tagging it as “one of the hardest states to vote in.” But the Ohio secretary of state is already reporting sharp increases in early voting over 2018. Early votes are also accumulating in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other swing states.

About the only thing that matches the impressive turnout is the left’s impressive memory-holing of their accusations. The press is running a loop of stories extolling Georgia’s early numbers, while failing entirely to explain how this fits with their prior insistence that Georgians were living in a new era of voter lockdown. An MSNBC video segment this week failed to mention the voting law at all, instead adopting a new Georgia meme: “Record breaking early voter turnout could be a wake-up call for Republicans.”

The numbers more broadly highlight a growing political reality: Democrats erred last year in choosing to craft their midterm message around claims of GOP extremism. The end of abortion rights. Insurrection. Racism. Voter suppression. Mr. Biden in his January speech nuttily suggested the choice was between his party and Republicans who were the equivalent of “Bull Connor” or “Jefferson Davis.”

It isn’t only that polls show these issues are completely disconnected from American voters’ priorities. It’s that these wild claims were always obviously false. Americans are realizing that abortion rights aren’t going away. They understand that neither party has a monopoly on crazies. And they know access to the ballot is alive and well—since they are exercising it.

What is real to voters is soaring inflation and energy prices, unsettling levels of crime and an unchecked border. Democrats don’t have any answer for those problems. And if the early-voting numbers suggest anything, a lot of voters may be coming out to register their disapproval.

Write to kim@wsj.com.