Georgia’s racist voting law, not Coke or Delta, is the problem, Sen. Rubio — so are you | Editorial

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio lashed out Thursday at Delta and Coca-Cola for daring — finally — to speak out against the restrictive Georgia law that makes it harder for people to vote — especially African Americans. In a Twitter video, he criticized the two high-profile Georgia companies for ties to China and tried to get a “woke corporate hypocrites” hashtag trending.

But he’s just trying to distract you. This isn’t about the corporations. It’s about a terrible law, a blatant attempt by Republicans trying to control the voting process in Georgia. They’ve stooped so low in the law that they even prohibit giving water to voters waiting in line. It’s part of Republican efforts nationwide to ensure that the party never, ever loses another election — even if they have to cheat to do it.

Corporate America has started coming out against all of that. And it’s not just Coke and Delta. Major League Baseball announced Friday that it will move the 2021 All-Star game out of Atlanta in response to the law. And on Friday, corporate executives from more than 170 companies issued a statement pushing to protect voting access across the country, noting: “There are hundreds of bills threatening to make voting more difficult in dozens of states nationwide.”

Who’s really scared?

Georgia’s Gov Brian Kemp, sticking to the Republicans’ deceitful agenda, blamed MLB for caving in to “cancel culture,” tweeting, “Major League Baseball may be scared of Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams, but we’re not. We will continue to fight to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat in Georgia.”

This from the man who, in 2018, was so scared of Abrams that, as Georgia secretary of state, he purged the rolls of more than 300,000 voters likely to vote for Abrams in the race for governor. Worked like a charm.

The law recently approved by the Georgia Legislature is a Republican power grab in a state that voted blue in the presidential and Senate elections, the first such Democratic victories there in a generation.

Rubio’s video is part of a Republican attempt to punish companies that stand up, even belatedly, against the law.

The law gives voters less time to request absentee ballots, makes it illegal for elections officials to mail out absentee ballots to every registered voter, as some did during the pandemic and drastically cuts down on the number of ballot drop boxes in Atlanta’s core — with its concentration of Black voters — among the many, many provisions in a 98-page bill. The bill is based on the false premise that Georgia’s election was tainted by fraud, something Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote in a memo to his employees.

Delta flip-flops

To be fair, Rubio’s not off-base with the charge of “corporate hypocrite.” Though Bastian finally came down on the right side of history, that wasn’t his first position on the law. Since 2018, Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines has donated more than $40,000 to the legislative sponsors of the voting bill, and the company played a large role in crafting the legislation itself. Bastian’s initial spin? “The legislation signed this week improved considerably during the legislative process, and expands weekend voting, codifies Sunday voting and protects a voter’s ability to cast an absentee ballot without providing a reason.” That’s when “BoycottDelta” started to trend, after which Bastian reversed course, admitting that the law will make it harder for Black Georgians to cast their votes and saying that the law is “wrong,” and “based on a lie.”

Unfortunately, Florida has started down the same path. Even though the state had a smooth election and former President Trump carried it, Republican lawmakers in Tallahassee are trying to prohibit ballot drop boxes in Senate Bill 90 and force voters to reapply for mail ballots for every election cycle, instead of every two cycles.

All of that amounts to another partisan attack on voting in Florida.

Rubio, like Trump before him, is trying to stoke anger against “wokeness” and corporations and China. He’s playing the culture-war card to distract us from Republicans’ un-American efforts. Don’t be fooled by their favorite scare tactics — claiming “wokeness” and “cancel culture.”

Rubio — who is up for reelection next year — and his like-minded colleagues need to know that voters will not be discouraged.

We will remember this in November 2022.

This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 1:26 PM.