By now we all know The Narrative™ that the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the mainstream media love to push: Republicans — especially Southern Republicans — are out to suppress the votes of minority citizens. States like Georgia and Texas are castigated by the left for their efforts to make elections more secure, despite the fact that these laws don’t disenfranchise anybody but cheaters.
In my home state of Georgia, the attacks on our new voter law have been particularly nasty. Joe Biden called it “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” and a group led by pretend-Gov. Stacey Abrams (D-Neighborhood of Make-Believe) called it “Jim Crow 2.0.” (See how The Narrative™ starts to repeat itself?)
Liberal Christian groups lied about the law to make it sound discriminatory, and Major League Baseball moved the All-Star Game from Atlanta over it.
Yet, the first election under the new law, Atlanta’s mayoral election, saw record turnout.
Voter turnout in Atlanta yesterday was 150% higher than it was four years ago.
If you're still calling Georgia's election laws "voter suppression" and "Jim Crow 2.0" you are not a serious person.
— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) November 3, 2021
Gee, if we Georgia conservatives are trying to suppress the vote, we’re doing a terrible job.
Enter Reuters. The esteemed international news organization with 170 years of history behind it published an article on Thursday that buries the truth for the benefit of The Narrative™.
The article, with the headline “Georgia Republicans purge Black Democrats from county election boards,” starts:
Protesters filled the meeting room of the Spalding County Board of Elections in October, upset that the board had disallowed early voting on Sundays for the Nov. 2 municipal election. A year ago, Sunday voting had been instrumental in boosting turnout of Black voters.
But this was an entirely different five-member board than had overseen the last election. The Democratic majority of three Black women was gone. So was the Black elections supervisor.
Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media.
The thing is, the article buries the true story of what happened in Spalding County, located southwest of Atlanta, in a quick paragraph near the end of the piece, but only after they bring up several other examples that supposedly fit The Narrative™.
Related: If Georgia’s New Voting Law Was ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ It’s Bizarro Jim Crow
Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics called Reuters out in an epic Twitter thread.
This is the most biased, intentionally dishonest, and racially inflammatory story I think I've ever read. Reuters should be ashamed. Gotta 🧵, because the details matter. pic.twitter.com/u9KMipZcT5
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) December 9, 2021
Bevan tells the true tale:
The details: Spalding County has a 5-person election board, which contained a majority of 3 black Dem women, and a black Dem woman election supervisor.
The new law stipulates the parties still get to choose 2 board members each, with the 5th member appointed by a local judge.
So, one black Dem woman member of the board, Vera McIntosh, was replaced by a Republican. The other 2 black Dem women RESIGNED from the board, in protest of the new law. They were replaced by two other Democrats, one of whom is black. Is it fair to describe that as a GOP purge?
And that elections supervisor who was “gone,” according to Reuters? She wasn’t let go because bigoted Republicans had a problem with her race. Issues with voting machines at all 18 precincts in Spalding County led to calls for Ridley to resign for what FOX 5 Atlanta referred to as “serious management issues.” Oh, and that new Georgia law requires the elections supervisor to be a resident and registered voter in the county where he or she works. Ridley was neither.
In other words, Marcia Ridley wasn’t let go because she was a Democrat. Or black. Or a woman. She was let go for not fulfilling the law and for failing to fulfill her job description.
At the end of the day, Reuters won’t be subject to fact-checks for this article because they reported the bare minimum of what happened in Spalding County. But the real problem with the article is the conclusions that Reuters jumps to. You see, it’s more important to Reuters that the story fits The Narrative™.
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