The Washington Post gave President Joe Biden “Four Pinocchios” for lying about an election integrity law recently passed by Georgia.
“What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is,” Biden said of the Georgia law, which Democrats have tried to characterize as an attempt to prevent minorities from voting. “It’s sick. It’s sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work.”
“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 added.
The Post’s Glenn Kessler — a reliable tool for the Left in most cases — said Biden’s claims were false, and that nowhere in the law are voting hours limited.
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Early voting was, in fact, expanded, Kessler noted.
“On Election Day in Georgia, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing in the new law changes those rules,” he wrote. “However, the law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.”
The law only revises voting hours to specify that polls must be open every weekday for at least eight hours, Kessler wrote.
“So where would Biden get this perception that ordinary workers were getting the shaft because the state would ‘end voting at five o’clock’?” he wrote.
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Kessler cited several election experts that agreed Georgia’s new law does not seriously restrict voting access.
“You can criticize the bill for many things, but I don’t think you can criticize it for reducing the hours you can vote,” said University of Georgia political scientist Charles S. Bullock III.
Kessler concluded that Biden’s claims about early voting and voting times were not backed by evidence, giving the president “Four Pinocchios.”
“One could understand a flub in a news conference. But then this same claim popped up in an official presidential statement. Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians,” he wrote.
