On March 25, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law S.B. 202, or the Election Integrity Act of 2021. The law contains several modest reforms aimed at securing the state’s elections. Some of the more notable provisions included in the bill are voter identification requirements for mail-in voting, limits on the use of ballot drop-boxes, increased early in-person voting, a ban on the distribution of unsolicited absentee ballot request forms, and a ban on outside groups distributing gifts to voters. To many, these concepts seem to be indicative of the security measures that most modern democracies have adopted; in fact, these regulations are fairly loose compared to France, for example, which has completely banned the practice of mail-in voting due to security concerns. Yet, the passage of this bill has sparked no shortage of fear-mongering and hyperbole from the usual legions of celebrities and politicians. Putting the insincere caterwauls of Alyssa Milano and LeBron James aside, it is clear that the various provisions included within this law are actually reasonably popular and do not constitute a violation of civil rights.

Arguably the most contentious of these reforms has been Georgia’s adoption of Voter I.D. requirements. Critics of the Gerogia law and others like it argue that Voter I.D. laws are discriminatory toward black communities. For example, President Joe Biden, in his usual embrace of “unity,” accused proponents of S.B. 202 of supporting “Jim Crow on steroids” (not exactly surprising from the same man who accused 2012 opponent Mitt Romney of wanting to “put y’all back in chains”). There exists one major problem for proponents of this contention, however; black voters support Voter I.D. requirements, and the results are not even close. A recent Rasmussen poll indicated that 69 percent of black respondents supported such a requirement, and Rasmussen isn’t alone in this conclusion. A 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that 76 percent of Americans supported Voter I.D. laws, revealing substantial support from all minority groups.

In another display of the widespread appeal of these requirements, conservative group Campus Reform conducted an amusing social experiment in which they told protesters of the law at Georgetown University about the individual reforms stipulated by S.B. 202, but did not tell them that they were listening to the Georgia bill’s reforms. Without the knowledge that they had heard the content of the very bill they were protesting, many of these students agreed that the restrictions were fair and reasonable, but recoiled upon hearing that they had just supported S.B. 202. In bringing up these examples, I do not intend to suggest that because a bill is supported by the public, it should become law; however, I wish to emphasize that much of the opposition that the Georgia law faces has been drummed up by unfair media coverage and the nonsensical virtue signalling of loudmouthed celebrities.

Even more foolish than these celebrities’ inaccurate statements is the recent corporate boycott attempt directed against the state of Georgia. While the massive international corporations engaging in this boycott decry the modest election reforms in Georgia, they fail to raise objections to manufacturing their products in unabashedly authoritarian countries like China. Actions speak louder than words and these companies’ actions indicate that they clearly couldn’t care less about the American’s ability to vote. The American people ought to dismiss this frivolous boycott altogether, and recognize its proponents’ selective outrage for what it is: a transparent attempt to cash in on naïve left-wingers’ opposition to a reasonable and good-faith effort to secure our elections.