President Biden Calls New GA Voting Law “A Blatant Attack” On U.S. Constitution

President Joe Biden has spoken on Georgia’s new voting law that GA Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed on Thursday.

According to Reuters, Biden condemned the new bill on Friday, saying it is “a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.”

Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature passed the bill that the President describes as a 21st-century version of Jim Crow laws that once suppressed African Americans’ votes.

The law enacts new restrictions on how and when Georgia voters can cast ballots, and many see it as an effort to suppress Black voting power, US News reported.

The state of Georgia was a driving force in helping President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris secure the 2020 presidential election and ensure a Democratic-majority Senate. Biden spoke on Georgia’s historic turnout in both November and January—the Senate runoff elections, which helped Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Ralph Warnock win.

“Yet instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote. This law, like so many others being pursued by Republicans in statehouses across the country, is a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience,” the President added in his statement made Friday.

Georgia hurriedly enacted its new law that will drastically control the voting process in the state. It places limitations on absentee voting, which became a vital tool for people who had timing conflicts due to jobs and family obligations. It’s believed this will make it harder for the Black community to vote in person, especially in majority-Black precincts that tend to have long lines. The bill also has limited voting hours.

Included in the provisions is a ban on people handing out water and snacks to those waiting in line to vote and the use of provisional ballots for most out-of-precinct voting. It also requires voter ID for the use of absentee ballots.

“It’s an atrocity,” Biden told reporters as he prepared to board Marine One en route to Joint Base Andrews and then Delaware. “If you want any indication that it has nothing to do with fairness, nothing to do with decency, they passed a law saying you can’t provide water to people standing in line while they’re waiting to vote? You don’t need anything else to know that this is nothing but punitive, designed to keep people from voting. You can’t provide water for people about to vote. Give me a break.”

“This is Jim Crow in the 21st century. It must end,” Biden said, referring to the legacy of segregationist laws enacted after the Civil War. “We have a moral and constitutional obligation to act.”