On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and host Chris Hayes maintained that Georgia passed a voter suppression law before the 2022 elections, with Warnock claiming people “overcame those barriers in order to send me and my partner, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), to the Senate,” and “people refused to have their voices muted in the system.”
Before the interview with Warnock, Hayes said that Georgia Republicans “were able to force through some of the most restrictive voter suppression rules in the country” after the 2020 election.
Warnock stated, “We are in a real fight for our democracy here in this country, and Georgia is ground zero. And the fact that the people of Georgia overcame those barriers in order to send me and my partner, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), to the Senate, it doesn’t mean those barriers don’t exist. It just means that the people refused to have their voices muted in the system. … Georgia’s SB 202 is exhibit A, if you will, of the problem, this effort to somehow wage war against this multiracial new American electorate that is emerging in our country and in our state and defending everything from voting rights to reproductive rights to ensuring that jobs and opportunity are available to every kid regardless of their zip code.”
Hayes then asked, “I think people — the defenders of the law — and some, I think not specifically people who are that heated — say, look, this was a law passed with certain restrictions. It got a lot of attention after January 6 because it was passed in 2021. It was decried by critics as an attempt at voter suppression, but look, you got elected, elections are running well. Were you crying wolf about this law?”
Warnock answered, “I won this last time, but people need to understand what I had to go through to win. Just as we entered into the runoff, this second time, there were some folks who clearly took a look at how we won in the last runoff, they cut the runoff in half from eight weeks to four weeks. And as we entered the runoff, the secretary of state and other Georgia officials announced that we wouldn’t be able to vote on the first Saturday of the runoff. And they were misinterpreting some Georgia law and saying, we’re sorry, our hands are tied, you can’t vote that first Saturday. … I sued them, and we won the case. And then the folks who said their hands were tied then showed their hands and appealed the judge’s ruling, who said, yeah, you can vote on Saturday. And then we had to appeal again, all of that just so people could vote the first Saturday of the runoff.”
According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Georgia’s total and citizen populations who voted in the November 2022 election exceeded the national average, and the percentage of the citizen population who voted increased from 2018 while the percentage of the total population who voted held steady.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
