Obama congratulates MLB for ‘taking a stand’ against Georgia election law

Daily US Times: Former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama have weighed in on Major League Baseball’s (MLB) decision to move its All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia’s new sweeping election law that imposes significant new obstacles to voting.

Following Friday’s MLB announcement, Mr Obama congratulated the league on Saturday “for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all citizens.” Mr Obama’s tweeted support of the move struck a starkly different tone from his Republican successor Donald Trump’s statement late Friday that called for a boycott of baseball and all of the “woke companies that are interfering with Free and Fair Elections.”

Opponents of the new election law in the state of Georgia say the legislation, dubbed The Election Integrity Act of 2021, and similar measures being considered in other states of the US, amount to voter suppression efforts that will reduce minority voting.

Republicans cast the measure as necessary to boost confidence in elections after the 2020 election saw Trump make unsubstantiated and false claims of voter fraud.

The legislation was signed into law last month by Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. The law imposes voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, allows state officials to take over local elections boards, limits the use of ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to offer or give voters drink or food as they wait in line to vote.

Georgia was key to current President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in last year’s November, and Biden, a Democrat, has called the bill “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity.”

You may read: Biden administration’s wave of pandemic optimism fades