'Someone Is Going to Get Hurt': Georgia Official Warns Biden That His 'Lies' About Voting Law Are Dangerous
The chief operating officer and chief financial officer in the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office warned that “[s]omeone is going to get hurt” if President Joe Biden continues to spread lies about Georgia’s new voting law.
In an Op-Ed for The Washington Post, Gabriel Sterling wrote about the similarities between the lies Biden is spreading about Georgia’s new election law and what he called the misinformation spread by President Donald Trump after the 2020 election.
“Though I have not received any threats yet, thankfully, that same foreboding is creeping up again as the president of the United States and others once again spread lies about what is going on in Georgia,” Sterling wrote.
“So I plead with the president once again: Someone is going to get hurt. Your words matter. The facts matter.”
He pointed out that Biden falsely claimed that Georgia’s new legislation decreased early voting hours.
“Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over,” Biden said at a news conference on March 25.
Sterling said the law actually expands early voting hours “by adding an extra mandatory Saturday of early voting and continuing to allow Sunday voting.”
“The new legislation does not decrease early voting hours, though President Biden falsely claimed otherwise,” he said.
The president also has criticized the Georgia law for supposedly making it “a crime to provide water to voters while they wait in line.”
“But providing gifts of any value to voters to reward them for casting a ballot has been illegal in Georgia for years,” Sterling said.
“A similar law exists in the president’s home state of Delaware, though it does not specify water or the infinite other things of value that could be used to persuade voters,” he wrote.
Sterling added that Georgia’s law actually closes a loophole that has been abused in the past.
Biden had also claimed that the law’s photo ID number requirement for absentee ballots “adds rigid restrictions … that will effectively deny the right to vote to countless voters.”
Sterling cited a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that showed photo ID laws don’t decrease turnout.
He also revealed the truth behind the allegation that the law gives the State Election Board the power to overturn elections.
“There is nothing in the bill that allows that and nothing within the Georgia code that gives the election board, let alone the legislature, the power to overturn an election,” Sterling said. “The law allows the board to remove top elections officials of poorly performing counties after a lengthy review and appeal process.”
Biden has also repeatedly claimed that Georgia’s law “is Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
“It is no small wonder how a law, which election experts agree expands voting access to all Georgians, could be compared to the vast historical effort to disenfranchise and oppress Black Americans,” Sterling wrote.
“While this isn’t necessarily how Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, or I, would have written this law, it is not what President Biden claims,” he said. “We saw just three months ago how election disinformation such as this can lead to violence. It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.
“For the long-term health of our shared democratic republic, let’s turn down the rhetoric, both on the left and the right.
“Let’s tell the truth. Let’s make elections boring again.”
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