Message in a bottle

The man who cried “Crow!”

“There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.”

—Mark Twain

YOU GOTTA hand it to the Republican Party. There doesn’t seem to be any easy, worthwhile task that the GOP can’t turn into a difficult one that provides the opposing party with what the military calls a Target Rich Environment. Republican captains will steer a piece of legislation through currents and eddies, and just before sailing into port with a winner, will add, off-hand, some little phrase or item or sentence that will not only act as an anchor on everything—including the news cycle—but will give late-night comics a week’s worth of jokes.

For example, in Georgia, you can’t give a bottle of water to a voter waiting in line.

That’s a distortion of the truth, of course. But it’s a line that fell into the opposition’s lap. The newly signed voter ID legislation in Georgia was amended to keep folks (like candidates, unions, the NRA) from approaching a line of voters with signs and T-shirts (and opinions) to “hand out water” while accidentally doing a little electioneering. Water can be provided on-site by the precinct itself.

But instead of debating voter ID laws, the news columns are filled with this:

“It’s worse than Jim Crow,” Derrick Boazman, a community leader in Georgia, told the press. “This bill would make it criminal to pass out a bottle of water to some old lady who had to stand in line.”

Republican PR takes another hit.

THE GREAT Bottled Water Debate aside, is the new law in Georgia really worse than Jim Crow?

President Joe Biden called Georgia’s new law “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” He actually called it “Jim Eagle.” Younger Democrats have used the phrase “Jim Crow 2.0.”

Opposition in Georgia, and the rest of the country, is on the attack. And Republicans, once again, find themselves floundering in the channel, hoping the winds shift.

Georgia’s new voter ID law is hell-and-gone from Jim Crow. Those post-Civil War pre-Civil Rights Act state laws enforced racial segregation and disenfranchised Black voters all across the South. States used the power of the law to keep Black people from even registering to vote. Whole counties went without a single Black registered voter for decades.

The law was used to keep Black people from serving on juries. Schools were separate and definitely not equal. Elected office was a non-starter. Those who’d complain that anything happening today is “Jim Crow 2.0” really need to take a high school American history course. Or read something, preferably a book.

Or perhaps they could read the new law. It does make some changes, including:

■ It requires a photo ID to request an absentee ballot. And if not a driver’s license, then an ID that the state will issue, free of charge.

“There is nothing ‘Jim Crow’ about requiring a photo or state-issued ID to vote by absentee ballot,” Gov. Brian Kemp said. “Every Georgia voter must already do so when voting in-person.”

■ The law reduces the number of ballot drop box locations.

■ It reduces the time between general and runoff elections.

■ It expands early voting in most counties, including two Sundays.

■ It allows every voter the ability to request a mail ballot, and nobody needs a reason.

■ The Hill says: “The new law also gives state lawmakers new powers over elections, and also allows the secretary of state to be removed from the top role overseeing elections should the State Elections Board determine a vote is in need of review.”

Critics point to worst-case scenarios in which a Republican legislature in the state would take over for local election boards. Now that’s a debate with some meat on it. How much would the fringe part of the party have changed things electorally in 2020 if the law had been in effect then? None at all? Everything at all? And how will the courts rule? Because you just know this is going to court.

That seems like the discussion Georgia, and the rest of America, should be having.

As far as voter ID, drop boxes, etc., some of us still think it should be every bit as difficult to vote as it is to write a check at the grocery store. We have never understood how making sure a voter is really a voter hurts the American democratic system. It seems such laws not only prevent fraud, but also increase confidence in elections.

But those are arguments that conservatives would win. For best example, take the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican in good standing: “There’s no rational argument against requiring state ID— provided for free to those who don’t have a driver’s license—for absentee ballots . . . . The left said that photo ID for in-person voting would suppress votes. It didn’t. Registration and turnout soared, hitting new records with each election cycle.

“Their cataclysmic predictions about the effects of this law are simply baseless.”

Those arguing against voter ID laws by comparing these changes to Jim Crow might have to eat crow if that comment was in the lede. Instead we get the Great Bottled Water Debate and comparisons to the American South in the 1890s. And a dumbed-down, silly argument that does nothing for the country.

Come, let us reason together.