Why the Georgia Voting Bill Is Bad

So when challenged, you’ll know what to say

Monday morning, I wrote a piece for New York magazine explaining Major League Baseball’s decision-making process in pulling the All-Star Game from Georgia in the wake of that state’s legislature passing its massive overhaul of its voting process. The point of the piece was to point out that MLB’s decision was not made because it had become “woke,” but was instead because it made a bottom-line, even dispassionate decision. One point I did not feel needed repeating was that the bill itself was bad.

It does appear it needed repeating. It has become an article of faith among defenders of the bill — or, more to the point, those trying to argue that MLB and other corporations lashing back against the bill are somehow part of “cancel culture,” an argument that, depressingly, is being made by the Governor of Georgia, who signed the bill — that it doesn’t not actually do all the thing its detractors say it does and that, in fact, is no big deal at all. This default stance has been parroted constantly: How does this bill make it harder for Black people to vote? Quit calling everything racist.

In an ideal world, a world in which all political and social constructs were debated in the public square, a grand salon of fair-minded discourse, and you could accept all arguments…