Republican Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones took aim at the liberal media for pushing the "Jim Crow 2.0" narrative about the Peach State's election reform law, calling it "ridiculous political posturing."
"When you have three weeks of early voting, and weekend voting, and the only thing you're asking of someone wanting to vote is that they can show an ID to, you know, to prove who they are and show a proper identification for that person to vote, I don't know how you can call than an attempt to suppress the vote," Jones told Fox News Digital in an interview.
In 2021, Georgia Republicans were inundated with attacks from the left for enacting election forms, which liberals insisted was a direct result of President Biden defeating former President Trump in the usually red state in the 2020 presidential election.
GEORGIA VOTING SHATTERING TURNOUT RECORDS AFTER MSNBC, CNN, OTHERS RAN WITH ‘JIM CROW’ ACCUSATIONS
Many at the time echoed Biden's characterization of the law as being "Jim Crow." New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wondered in his piece titled "If It’s Not Jim Crow, What Is It?" Vanity Fair blared the headline "'Jim Crow in a suit and tie': Georgia passes massive voter suppression bill." MSNBC host Joy Reid declared the Georgia legislation the "end of democracy" in America, calling it "Jim Crow American." The Washington Post editorial board wrote that "No, is not a full return to Jim Crow. But it shows a toxic hostility to democracy that no Republican can take pride in."
The uproar sparked a boycott movement against Georgia which resulted in the MLB moving its 2021 All-Star game out of Atlanta, but Atlanta later got its revenge as the Braves won the World Series that fall.
Despite what the media wanted Americans to believe, Georgia in fact shattered turnout records in both the May primaries and in the November general election.
Additionally, a poll released by the University of Georgia last week showed that an astonishing 99% of voters in the state had no problems voting in 2022.
Jones, who help spearhead the legislation as a state senator before he was elected lieutenant governor in the 2022 midterms, said there was an "outcry" following the 2020 election from constituents who alleged various issues they had as they tried to vote from being turned away to inaccurate records showing they had already voted.
He called the volume of complaints at the time "alarming."
"In this cycle, I didn't have one person reach out to me with a complaint or, you know, a frustration with the process. And it just kind of validated what, you know, we thought the legislation was gonna make it easier to vote and harder to cheat," Jones said. "Nothing's 100 percent perfect, but we felt like we corrected a lot of the issues that happened from the previous election cycle."
Given the political climate, Jones said he "wasn't surprised" by the immediate backlash from the media the legislation received but that no one can prepare themselves for all the national attention.
He also said it was "obvious" that no one in the media read the legislation but instead relied on "talking points" from Democrats like Stacey Abrams, the gubernatorial candidate who was defeated again by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in the 2022 midterms.
Joseph Watson, a professor of public affairs communications at the University of Georgia, said the media was "understandably suspicious" by the election reform efforts since they were being championed by those who denied the validity of the 2020 election but the media "had a responsibility to cover the content of the laws fairly and accurately" once the law was implemented.
"Many outlets chose to parrot the ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ slogan used by the law's partisan critics in their headlines instead of reporting on the facts," Watson told Fox News Digital. "While they usually attributed the ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ characterization to the critics, they still used it frequently as clickbait for news articles, as well as lead-ins for broadcast coverage, and it was further perpetuated by their columnists and contributors."
"These media outlets trivialized the brutal realities that Black Americans endured under Jim Crow in the past, while inflaming fears and sowing discord in the present based on partisan rhetoric rather than an objective review of the substance of the new laws," Watson continued.
The newly-elected lieutenant governor singled out The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia's largest newspaper, for being "very vocal" with its opposition of the legislation.
"There was an article almost daily about it," Jones recalled. "All they would say was that we were reacting because we were, you know, upset about the 2020 election results. That was not the case."
At the time, the AJC issued a major correction after it falsely reported that the law would limit voting hours, mirroring misinformation that was echoed by Biden.
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Jones isn't expecting any mea culpas from the media, telling Fox News Digital, "you just move on and know that you were right in your efforts," adding it's "not worse wasting time" trying to get news outlets to admit they were wrong.
"You're always having to tweak election processes and things of that nature… it's no different than playing in a ball game or doing a business deal," Jones said. "You look at what you did right and look at the things you did wrong, and you try to learn from the things that you did wrong and correct them, and then you just move on. And that's really what we were doing and what we always do as elected officials. You try to learn from past mistakes and hope you don't repeat them and just try to always improve your craft moving forward."
Fox News' Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.
