McConnell: Corporations shouldn’t fall for disinformation on voting laws

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday warned companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines to “stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex” in reaction to their executives criticizing a new Georgia voting law that critics say would make absentee voting harder and create new restrictions.

McConnell argued that Georgia’s new law is not more restricting than the laws in New York state, which is also home to many corporations but hasn’t received any of the public backlash that Georgia has.

“It’s jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied, but join in the bullying themselves. Wealthy corporations have no problem operating in New York, for example, which has fewer days of early voting than Georgia, requires excuses for absentee ballots, and restricts electioneering via refreshments,” McConnell said in a statement released Monday.

“There is no consistent or factual standard being applied here. It’s just a fake narrative gaining speed by its own momentum,” he added.

Dozens of companies have voiced public criticism of Georgia’s voting laws after voting rights advocates threatened boycotts of their businesses if they didn’t speak up.

James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, said last week that he was disappointed in the new Georgia voting law and said his company supports the enactment of federal legislation to protect voting access and address voter suppression across the nation.

“We all have a duty to protect everyone’s right to vote, and we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the U.S.,” he said last week.

The CEOs of Merck and Delta have also spoken out against the Georgia voting law, and Major League Baseball announced on Friday that it will move the 2021 All-Star Game and the MLB draft from Atlanta.

McConnell on Monday said “Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling.”

“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government. Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” he warned.

The GOP leader pointed to analysis in The Washington Post that he said “debunked” claims from the Biden White House about the new Georgia voting law.

“Plenty of Democrat-run states allow fewer days of early voting than the new Georgia law requires,” McConnell wrote. “More than 70 percent of Americans, including a majority of Democrats and a supermajority of independents, favor commonsense voter I.D. requirements; even so, Georgia will accept alternatives to driver’s licenses to verify absentee voters.”

An analysis by The New York Times, however, identified 16 new provisions in the Georgia law that “will limit ballot access, potentially confuse voters and give more power to Republican lawmakers.”

The Times noted that in the 2020 election there were 94 drop boxes for ballots across the four counties that make up the Atlanta metropolitan area, while the new law limits the same counties to a total of 23 drop boxes in the future.

The analysis also pointed out that voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots, there will be strict new identification requirements for absentee ballots and that while early voting is expanded in small counties, it likely won’t be in more populous ones.