The White House touted a “record turnout” in the state’s runoff election on Tuesday, which gave Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock a second term despite President Biden’s frequent comparisons of Georgia’s voting reform statute to “Jim Crow.”
The Georgia Election Integrity Act, approved by Republicans, was condemned by the president and other Democrats in 2021 as an alleged right-wing effort to suppress Black votes. The president referred to the bill as “Jim Crow in the 21st century” in October 2021. The statute, according to the president in January of this year, is “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Despite a record attendance in the primary, general, and runoff elections, Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on how the Biden administration justified its prior statements.
According to Jean-Pierre, there were still incidents of voter “suppression” throughout the Georgia election, citing “reports.”
She declined to comment on the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the State of Georgia about the March 2021 bill, saying only that “but even with that, the American people came out… in a historic manner to make their voices loud and clear.”
In the Georgia runoff election on Tuesday, Warnock trounced Republican opponent Herschel Walker, giving Democrats an absolute majority in the Senate for the remainder of President Biden’s current term and ending a lackluster midterm election cycle for the GOP in the year’s final significant vote.
On Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock gave a speech at an election night watch party in Atlanta.
Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority with Warnock’s second runoff victory in as many years, adding one seat from the existing 50-50 split thanks to John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania. Despite this, there will be a split government because Republicans barely flipped the House.
In the almost 4 million ballots cast in the election last month, Warnock had a lead over Walker of 37,000 votes, but fell short of the required 50% to prevent a runoff.
\Walker, a football legend at the University of Georgia and in the NFL, was unable to overcome a slew of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for the abortions of two former girlfriends despite supporting a national ban on the procedure.
As a result, the senator appeared to be headed for a wider final margin in Tuesday’s runoff.
Georgia had about 1.9 million mail-in and early ballots cast for the runoff elections. About 1.4 million new voters were added on Election Day, somewhat higher than the numbers from November and 2020.
