Georgia enacted a law that changed voting in the state. It’s got some serious (and less serious) flaws. It’s got some fair points which are fairly common in other state’s voting laws. It’s got some good things buried in there too. It’s entirely fair, if not our duty, to be critical of laws when and to the extent we disagree with them and believe them to be bad law.
Calling it “Jim Crow on steroids,” on the other hand, is bizarrely inflammatory and illuminates nothing. Yet it worked.
Many Georgians will suffer for this choice, a problem recognized by those pushing the “Jim Crow” aspect of this relatively banal legislation, who are now constrained to try to thread the needle, recognizing that their attacks on a law are exacting a price from people who had nothing to do with it.
Abrams, a former Georgia state representative, wrote in a statement shared on Twitter that “others in positions of leadership” should join the MLB in condemning the law, which includes several voting restrictions such as requiring photo ID to vote by mail and limiting access to ballot drop boxes.
“Like many Georgians, I am disappointed that the MLB is relocating the All-Star game; however, I commend the players, owners and the League commissioner for speaking out,” Abrams wrote.
Can you have it both ways? Can you take the position that a state has just enacted “Jim Crow on steroids” while claiming to be disappointed that Major League Baseball acted upon this cry? What was MLB to do?
Major League Baseball sent a warning shot on Friday to Republicans considering new laws to restrict voting, pulling its summer All-Star game out of suburban Atlanta in a rebuke to Georgia’s new election rules that will make it harder to vote in the state’s urban areas.
The announcement by the baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred, came after days of lobbying from civil rights groups and discussions with stakeholders like the Major League Baseball Players Association. The action is likely to put additional pressure on other organizations and corporations to consider pulling business out of Georgia, a move that both Republicans and Democrats in the state oppose despite fiercely disagreeing about the new voting law.
The rhetoric is that the Republican majority Georgia legislature enacted this law to suppress black voting in “urban areas,” which used to be called cities before two words took the place of one. The law, it’s argued, “fixes” non-existent problems based on lies perpetrated by Trump in his claims that the election was rigged. The alternative view is that the law codifies transitory changes arising from an election held during a pandemic, together with adoption of some “ease of use” methods that have become absolutely necessary to facilitate voting by people who either found it burdensome before or just couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort.
Under the new Georgia law, it will be easier to vote by mail than it is in New York. Citizens will have a far longer window to vote than in New Jersey. In New York, gifts on line under a dollar are exempt from criminalization, but you can still hand out free stuff in Georgia as long as it’s 150 feet away from the polling place. There will be too many drop boxes in the sticks and not enough in cities. Then again, how many states had drop boxes before the pandemic?
Yet, businesses like Delta, Coke and Dell, are now under pressure to leave Georgia. MLB has made its choice to pull the All-Star Game from the state. Governor Kemp, no longer atop his pedestal from resisting the demands of Trump, is left scrambling.
“Today, Major League Baseball caved to fear, political opportunism, and liberal lies,” Mr. Kemp said in a statement, calling out Mr. Biden and Stacey Abrams, the titular head of the state’s Democrats. He continued: “I will not back down. Georgians will not be bullied. We will continue to stand up for secure, accessible, fair elections.”
Do these entities have the right to decide that Georgia isn’t where they want to be, that the law is evil and they need to take a stand against it by pulling their resources from the state in protest? Of course they do, even if you hated Citizens United until it served your purpose. But this raises the question not of whether they have the right to do so, but why they have decided to take this course as opposed to either staying out of politics or staying put.
Major League Baseball has made its choice and it has chosen to leave Georgia. You may agree or disagree with the choice, but ignore the fact that it chose to turn off the lights at your peril.
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The more woke pro sports get, the worse their viewership numbers get. But apparently they haven’t noticed the correlation yet.
Pro sports has three constituencies: The players, the advertisers and the fans. In the past, they tended to have aligned interests. That may no longer the case, or at least the perceived case. I wonder what the players will think when they find their $30 million contracts disappear if the interest, and thus the money, isn’t there. Or maybe it will be there because there’s no other game in town?
But the money comes, ultimately, from the fans–either directly by ticket sales, indirectly from TV subscription fees, or more indirectly through the advertisers. And I think they’re finding out that the fan interest is more elastic than they’d heretofore believed–there are, in fact, other games in town, even including some that don’t preach hate to (and of) their own customers.
The combo of politics and pandemic hasn’t been good for sports. Fan interest has proven more elastic than anyone thought. But I still won’t watch soccer.
Most of my friends and I gave up on pro sports when they went woke. And as far as we are concerned, college sports are pro as well, just under a different name.
That’s why I’ve switched to watching curling. And I’m an old curmudgeon so I’ll say it out loud. The women are hot!
So you like to watch women sweep? I won’t kink shame.
As a Lions fan, I am honor-bound to keep watching until they at least get to a Superbowl. But I like college more, at least until they start getting paid too.
“When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.” ~ Dylan Thomas
A lack of interest in the Braves? Yes. But that started long before baseball got political. Try convincing a Red Sox season ticket holder that interest in Baseball is waning.
My local NPR station has been trying to thread this needle, explains that it it’s not Jim Crowe but still very very bad. They also explained that it’s a big bill and they really haven’t had time to analyze the entire thing yet
This may be off topic. I hope not. In my fantasy world no other municipality or MLB team would agree to host the game.
… I did say fantasy world.
It might well be in their long-term self-interest to take that position, as any city/state/team could eventually find itself subject to secondary coercion if it enables this capitulation. But we both know that will never happen.
It’s such a fine line between sanctions and oppression. Do it for the party, but do it in the name of social justice.
The MLB must be on pins and needles about when the mob will start tearing into their identity issues.
its mlb. not the mlb
It’s the one where they swing those stick things, right?
This is far too balanced a take for the internet!
Internet? What internet? I’m just tapping away at my computer.
More of this to come. Potentially lots more. Big, complicated legislation is perfect fodder for the media narrative machine.
I have no idea whether the bill does what it is said to do or not. Since the media can’t be trusted to play it honestly, neither does anybody else, including Rob Manfred. The only way to know is to read the damn thing myself, and who has time (or inclination) to do that?
Saw a story that MLB was lukewarm on moving, but received pretty strong pressure from advertisers. Are companies so blinded by politics to notice that when they stay neutral only the small fringes care, but when they choose a side they piss off half of their customers? You’re right, Scott, this keeps up and player salaries are going to start dropping, depending on the timing of TV license renewals. That ain’t gonna go over well.
Are the various entities involved making business decisions or “moral” decisions? I don’t ask this question speciously, but given that MLB’s choice reflects an astoundingly dubious choice that could easily have been avoided, is that small fringe really just a small fringe anymore, or have they won the big game?
I really hope it’s still the fringe.
I think it’s pretty likely on the left that, at least as of now, the kooky woke part of the left is the fringe and they’re just the noisiest. Squeaky wheel and all. The people who actually gave the world Biden instead of Warren or Bernie are just quietly watching like the rest of us.
I wonder sometimes about how fringy the kooky on the right really is. For example, the Trumpian reaction to the virus and vaccines and all seems pretty pervasive on that side.
But I don’t know. I do know that I’m a hard core baseball guy – it’s what I grew up playing and my dad played in the Pirates’ minor league system – and this virtue signalling by MLB is very disappointing. I’ve considered sending them a complaint, but I know I’ll just be blown off as a rightist (which I’m not). Another bad characteristic of our current politics – anybody who disagrees can simply be dismissed as the other side without any consideration of what they’re saying.
Our politics and media is completely broken.
This is the NYT analysis: Go page by page through Georgia’s new voting law, and one takeaway stands above all others: The Republican legislature and governor have made a breathtaking assertion of partisan power in elections, making absentee voting harder and creating restrictions and complications in the wake of narrow losses to Democrats. [Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules.]
This is a law blog, and we tend to be less interested in the “one takeaway” of people with no competence whatsoever in law, and a fairly clear bias, than with the law itself, particularly when juxtaposed with similar laws throughout the country.
Ooh, the NYT. Now THERE’S an unbiased source.
I could have told you the NYT’s opinion about the Georgia law without reading the article.
This thread provides a fairly quick and fair look at the good, bad and ugly.
“Social Justice Theater.”
MLB shouldn’t get a vote in state and local laws. It is funny to see folks who normally bemoan corporate influence in politics cheering it on here. I suspect the experience of Charlotte and Atlanta will cause cities and ststed to include explicit language in contracts for future events which provide for heavy buyout clauses for things such as this. Theyd be fools not to.