White House press secretary Jen Psaki was pressured on Monday by liberal and conservative media members about President Biden’s opposition to a new Georgia voting law after he won “Pinocchios” from fact-checkers for make false statements about your provisions.
Biden asked the Major League Baseball last week to transfer its July all-star game from Atlanta in protest and the MLB took the advice, outring Republicans who say the law was portrayed and attacked inaccurately.
Biden was awarded “Quatro Pinocchios” by the Washington Post, which endorsed his candidacy, for spreading misinformation about the impact of state law on voting hours.
The law does not change election day hours, but expands early voting by adding a second mandatory Saturday. It also states that counties have the option to open two Sundays and allow counties to extend voting hours beyond standard business hours.
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Psaki at his daily news conference on Monday about Biden’s inaccurate comments, including during the ESPN interview in which he expressed support for the Atlanta boycott.
“Is the president going to change the way he talks about Georgia’s new voting law? Because in that interview you mentioned, he said that the law would end voting at five o’clock, when workers are just leaving, and he said he would end voting hours early so that workers cannot vote after their term ends. round – but the Washington Post gave this claim ‘four Pinocchios’ because that part of the law gives counties the option of extending voting time, ”asked Doocy.
Psaki replied that “fundamentally, the president does not believe that it should be more difficult to vote, he believes that it should be easier. And this bill makes it more difficult to request and return an absentee ballot, it reduces the length of the second round of elections in Georgia, making it more difficult for large jurisdictions to offer early voting. It imposes new strict restrictions on the ability of local authorities to set voting times according to the needs of voters in their county. These are all pieces of the account. So his view is that we need to make it easier and not harder to vote, and that will continue to be what he stands for. “
Georgia law requires a photo ID to obtain an absentee ballot and reduces the time window for absentee voting. It also allows state officials to assume local electoral posts in response to alleged misconduct.
A different reporter, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, asked Psaki in a follow-up question: “The president recognizes that the new law doesn’t change election day voting hours, right?”
To that end, Psaki said, seeming to repeat the statement that earned the Pinocchios Biden, “It also does not expand them for early voting. This makes early voting shorter. So there are many components of the legislation that he is concerned with and that is what he was expressing ”.