Fox News has been waging a dishonest campaign to defend the restrictive new election law in Georgia — enacted by the Republican legislature in the wake of the upset Democratic victories there by President Joe Biden, plus Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. In the wake of the decision by Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, one tack used by Fox has been to dishonestly compare the voting laws between Georgia and Colorado.

And on Wednesday’s edition of Outnumbered, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner allowed these comparisons to be made without pushback by two Fox News contributors who had each played a public role in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result in the Peach State.

The panel was responding to Biden’s remarks on Wednesday in an address to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network that “parts of our country are backsliding into Jim Crow,” thanks to the new wave of Republican-passed laws to restrict voting.

Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich fired back: “This is an explicit, clear lie. Everything they’ve said about the Georgia law is false. Major League Baseball, in moving from Georgia to Colorado, is going to a state that has worse laws, not better laws.” 

Faulkner herself echoed Gingrich later in the segment: “For instance, as Newt Gingrich pointed out, why take the MLB All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado, when Georgia actually has more early voting days and about the same voter ID situation that you have in Colorado, and a lot of states do?”

Colorado’s election laws are in no way similar to Georgia’s

The commentary from Faulkner, Gingrich, and McEnany is both a dishonest, apples-and-oranges comparison of exactly how voting is done between those two states — and a total falsehood on the question of voter ID.

The reason that Colorado has fewer in-person voting days is because it is almost entirely a vote-by-mail state, with all registered voters actually being sent ballots in the mail automatically instead of having to apply for them separately. As a result, over 90% of Coloradans vote by either mail or depositing their ballots in special dropboxes, and even the few people who do vote in person don’t need photo identification, but can use a utility bill or paycheck stub instead.

By contrast, the new Georgia law forbids local election offices from even sending out unsolicited absentee ballot applications — let alone actual ballots — and also shortens the window of time for people to apply for absentee ballots. The new law also imposes strict voter ID requirements to vote in-person or by mail, while Colorado does not require a photo ID to vote by mail.

In addition, Colorado had one dropbox per 9,400 active and registered voters in 2020, compared to Georgia’s new law capping dropboxes at one per 100,000 active and registered voters. Moreover, Georgia’s boxes will have to be located inside early voting sites and only accessible during the regular open hours, compared to 24-hour accessibility in Colorado.

Fox anchor Faulkner gives a pass to prolific election liars Gingrich and McEnany

Gingrich accused Biden of lying about the new election law in Georgia — but it is actually Gingrich who has lied about actual election results in Georgia, spreading conspiracy theories and debunked falsehoods about the vote counts and asserting the paradoxical claim: “The objective fact is I believe Trump probably did actually carry Georgia” (perhaps it was an “objective fact” that he “believed” it, but it is still objectively false).

Gingrich has also called for Trump supporters to go to the governor’s mansion and state capitol back in December, in the lead-up to the certification of Biden’s victory in the state, in order to “communicate that you're prepared to stand up for America.”

Furthermore, at no time did the panel acknowledge possibly the most pernicious aspect of the new law: It strips the Georgia secretary of state of their position as the chair of the state board of elections, and makes a majority of the board appointed by the GOP-controlled legislature, as well as giving the board the new power to suspend and replace local county elections officials.

Meanwhile, Faulkner also turned to Kayleigh McEnany — who, during her time as both White House press secretary and Trump campaign adviser, called for the Republican-controlled legislature to change the absentee ballot numbers a month after the election, and for the governor to “threaten the budget of the secretary of state” to overturn the state’s election results. For her part, McEnany claimed that this new law “expands voting opportunity.”

But instead of pushing back against any of this, Faulkner gave her approval to their false statements about the latest new Georgia law.