Fact Check: Colorado has many voting laws that are similar to Georgia

Last night the world learned Major League Baseball (MLB) is moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver’s Coors Field.

While this is welcomed news for the local economy and countless hospitality workers who spent the better part of last winter deprived of their ability to work by Gov. Polis, relocating the game to Denver is rife with woke hypocrisy.

Despite what most of the mainstream media now claims, Colorado’s voting laws are actually similar to Georgia’s new election law in several ways (kudos to Newsweek for getting it right.)

Let’s start with Colorado’s and Georgia’s voter ID requirements.

Stacey Abrams and Georgia Democrats have long decried voter ID requirements as racist, a narrative that far preceded Georgia’s new law.

“We have seen over the last 20 years a constriction on [voting rights]. We have seen it through voter ID laws,” Abrams said in 2019.

However, Georgia’s reformed voter ID requirements are remarkably similar to Colorado’s standards.

Like Colorado, Georgia allows voters without ID to use the last four digits of their Social Security number, a bank statement or utility bill, a paycheck, or any other government document with their name and address. Though ID requirements are the provision Democrats hate most, they are broadly popular among voters, which is why they are compelled to use hyperbole and disinformation when talking about the rest of these laws.

In fact, for first time voters Colorado’s mail ballot ID requirement is comparable to the Peach State’s rule.

Colorado requires many first time mail voters to actually produce a photocopy of one’s ID.

Moreover, if a mail ballot fails Colorado’s signature match process, voters must produce either a photocopy of their ID or present an ID at a local election office to “cure” their ballot and have it counted.

As Karl Rove recently observed in the Wall Street Journal:

Ms. Abrams and her allies also oppose efforts to toughen signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots. But what about Colorado? The increasingly blue Mile High State has what’s likely the toughest such procedures in the country, which is important since it conducts elections primarily by mail.

 

Last fall, roughly 1 of every 112 ballots—29,000 altogether—was rejected because the signature didn’t match the one on file with election officials. This was after voters were allowed to “cure” problems by responding to a text asking for a copy of—you guessed it—their driver’s license or other photo I.D. bearing their signature. More than 11,000 did so. When will Colorado’s Democratic governor and legislature be branded vote suppressors?

Yet you won’t hear a word from the MLB decrying voter ID and its alleged impact on low income communities who (if you believe Stacey Abrams) could be “scared out of voting.”

Colorado also has a shorter period of early voting than was enshrined in Georgia’s new law.

“Georgia has 17 days of in-person early voting including two optional Sundays, Colorado has 15,” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said last night.

While it’s true Colorado in-person voting locations typically have short wait times, Georgia’s new election law also includes provisions to reduce wait times at crowded precincts.

And what about Democrats’ complaints about new Georgia rules restricting electioneering via providing food and water outside of in-person voting locations?

Wall Saletan, a reporter for left-leaning Slate, called outrage over those electioneering rules “overhyped.”

As it turns out, Colorado has (you guessed it!) similar rules prohibiting that same kind of electioneering outside of in-person voting locations.

Given the intense PR campaign Georgia Democrats, President Biden, the MLB, and “woke” corporations have launched against Georgia, one might expect the public to be overwhelmingly opposed to the new law.

However, recent polling shows a plurality of Americans actually support Georgia’s election reforms.

While it’s hard to be upset about the economic boon the All-Star game will provide to Colorado, the fact remains white liberals in Denver will disproportionately benefit from the All-Star game at the expense of Atlanta African Americans who stand to lose millions because the league caved to woke Democrats and their corporate allies.