MLB Rips GA Voter ID Law but Requires Photo ID to Pick Up Tickets at Games
Acting like the spoiled kid who picks up his bat and glove and heads for home when he doesn’t get his way, Major League Baseball has chosen to move its 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta because of Georgia’s new election integrity law.
In the wake of the 2020 election, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp passed legislation that the left insists is controversial because it mandates voters show ID to request and cast absentee ballots — a security measure that mirrors MLB’s own ticketing procedures.
Although the recently passed law has zero impact on the league directly, MLB nevertheless joined the rest of the woke mob in erroneously attacking the Peach State for racially motivated voter suppression.
Far from it, the law only includes commonsense changes like securing ballot drop boxes, tightening deadlines to request absentee ballots and disqualifying ballots incorrectly cast outside of the voter’s precinct.
Still, MLB has joined with the rest of the pack in the one-note chant of “white supremacy” and punished the state by moving its July 13 game — and the revenue that comes along with it — out of Georgia.
At the same time, MLB requires baseball fans to show photo ID to pick up tickets purchased online or left at will call.
Yet the league has not branded its own measure spectator suppression or any such nonsense — and Rep. Nancy Mace was not about to let that fact slide.
The South Carolina Republican savaged this hypocrisy in a tweet Friday that included a screen shot from MLB’s website showing that a “person will need a picture ID to pick up their tickets.”
“Hey @MLB, this you?” Mace wrote.
Hey @MLB, this you? pic.twitter.com/4onEFdmt5U
— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) April 3, 2021
While the league requires proper ID at the box office to pick up tickets, Commissioner Rob Manfred objects to the same measure when applied to votes cast at the ballot box.
“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” he said in a statement Thursday.
The law would not be at all controversial in a sane world, just as ID requirements are an expected part of boarding a domestic flight, purchasing liquor, taking out a loan, opening a checking account, applying for food stamps, going to the doctor, opening a PayPal account and so much more.
But this is an alternate reality in which Democrats in government and their cronies in the establishment media collude to pressure corporations to do their bidding.
President Joe Biden did his part when he said Georgia’s law makes “Jim crow look like Jim Eagle” even though the law has nothing to do with race at all except to those who assume black people are incapable of doing the bare minimum required to function as an adult in society.
“I think that today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that,” Biden told ESPN, endorsing the move before the fate of the July 13 game was announced.
“People look to them. They’re leaders. Look at what happened with the NBA, as well. Look what’s happened across the board,” he said.
“The very people who were victimized the most are the people who are the leaders in these various sports.”
The media were just as eager to play that distortion game, with CNN implying Georgia’s law would restrict voter access and MSNBC using it as an excuse to push for the radical H.R. 1 election reform power grab.
The New York Times even ran an opinion piece Tuesday headlined, “If It’s Not Jim Crow, What Is It?” that made the convoluted connection between racism and laws that have nothing to do with race.
And yet for MLB, this apparently unduly onerous, racist, Jim-Crowesque ID requirement is still part of its ticketing procedure.
Besides the hypocrisy, moving the game has real-world implications for black people that dwarf any made-up voter suppression claims.
In moving the game to its new home at Coors Field in Denver — a state that actually has arguably stricter voter ID laws — MLB has stolen the economic windfall from the city of Atlanta, which is 51 percent black, and granted it to 76 percent white Denver, as Fox News reported.
All of this proves that MLB’s actions have nothing to do with objections to voter integrity laws, identification requirements or even race — it’s about kowtowing to leftists’ insane political whims to pacify the woke crowd.
Like in many other states, the people and politicians of Georgia supported election security measures because they wanted to make sure that the state’s elections are free and fair, and they understand the way to do that is to match a ballot to a properly credentialed voter.
MLB’s own policy requires proper credentials, but it’s still intent on punishing Georgia voters for wanting the same safeguards — and that’s very unsportsmanlike.
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