Last week, Georgia enacted voting restrictions that will disproportionately impact minority voters. But in an effort to counter widespread criticism of the law, Fox News personalities are falsely claiming that the legislation actually makes it easier to vote.
Georgia’s new law is the face of a nationwide campaign by Republican-controlled state legislatures to restrict voting access following the 2020 election. These measures were created in response to baseless claims of voter fraud that many Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures helped to propagate following President Joe Biden’s victory.
The New York Times recently published a closer look at the Georgia legislation, which found that it will “curtail ballot access for voters in booming urban and suburban counties, home to many Democrats.” The law limits the use of drop boxes, bans mobile voting centers except for emergencies declared by the governor, and shortens the time voters have to request an absentee ballot, among other restrictions.
During a White House press briefing on April 1, Fox Business reporter Ed Lawrence suggested that the Biden administration should reconsider its “tone” on the law after he noted that Biden has falsely claimed that the law would end voting hours at 5 p.m. Lawrence also pushed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's claim that the law expands voting access. After White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued that the law “limits voting access and makes it more difficult for people to engage in voting in Georgia,” Lawrence replied, “No, that’s actually not what the governor of Georgia has said.”
The same day on America Reports, Fox contributor Katie Pavlich argued that Biden had lied about numerous aspects of the law, including that “it limits voting. That’s not true. The law actually expands voting to weekends, has 17 days of early voting.” It’s true that changes to weekend voting would likely expand voting access in rural counties, yet Pavlich ignored the other limitations the law would impose and the fact that many more densely populated counties already offered the required number of weekend voting days.
The next morning on Fox & Friends, co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy complained about criticism of the law and opposition from some major companies. Doocy claimed, “They’ve actually made it easier for people to vote. That is a good thing. But it is being politicized and demonized by Democrats.” Doocy continued, “The problem is there’s so much misinformation out there, political propaganda put out there by the Democrats to make it seem like the Republicans are taking away your right to vote.”