Sen. McConnell: Corporations Shouldn’t Fall for Absurd Disinformation on Voting Laws

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) issued the following statement regarding disinformation campaigns surrounding debates over election laws:

“We are witnessing a coordinated campaign by powerful and wealthy people to mislead and bully the American people.

“The President has claimed repeatedly that state-level debates over voting procedures are worse than Jim Crow or ‘Jim Crow on steroids.’ Nobody actually believes this. Nobody really thinks this current dispute comes anywhere near the horrific racist brutality of segregation. But there’s an old cynical saying that ‘history is just the set of lies agreed upon.’ And a host of powerful people and institutions apparently think they stand to benefit from parroting this big lie.

“The Washington Post has repeatedly debunked White House lies about legislation in Georgia: ‘In reality, Election Day hours were not changed and the opportunities to cast a ballot in early voting were expanded.’ Plenty of Democrat-run states allow fewer days of early voting than the new Georgia law requires. 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. All the facts disprove the big lie.

“These absurd tactics predate this Georgia law. Last summer, just weeks after Senate Democrats used the filibuster to kill Senator Tim Scott’s police reform and anti-lynching legislation, Democrats abruptly began calling the same rules they happily used themselves a ‘Jim Crowrelic.’

“This disinformation has a purpose. Washington Democrats want to pass a sweeping bill that would let them rewrite all 50 states’ election laws and turn the Federal Election Commission into a Democrat-run partisan body. This power grab is impossible to defend, so the left wants to deflect. Instead of winning the debate, they want to silence debate by bullying citizens and entire states into submission.

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

“Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex. 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. Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at ballot box.”