The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) issued a correction after falsely claiming that Georgia’s new election law will result in limited voting hours.
The claim has been pushed by President Joe Biden and The Washington Post’s fact check section recently gave the president “Four Pinocchios” after he said the law “ends voting hours early.” The AJC corrected its article and noted that the new law, signed by Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, doesn’t “limit voting hours.”
Biden condemned Georgia’s law recently, writing in a statement that: “Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.”
AJC with a whoopsie pic.twitter.com/1VvviTV6Jl
— Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) April 1, 2021
The Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler dove into why the claim was false in his own fact check. (RELATED: ‘I’m Glad To Deal With It’: Gov. Kemp Fends Off Corporate Criticism Of Georgia’s Sweeping Voting Law Changes)
“One could understand a flub in a news conference. But then this same claim popped up in an official presidential statement. Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians,” Kessler wrote.
“On Election Day in Georgia, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing in the new law changes those rules. However, the law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them,” he confirmed.
Part of The AJC’s correction appeared to mimic Kessler’s statement. Prior to this correction, it issued an earlier correction that cited “experts” who “say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.” This comment was also in Kessler’s fact-check piece.
And it wasn’t just national news outlets btw. Here was a correction in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The article was about how Tyler Perry (the director) thought the law was unconstitutional. pic.twitter.com/SIt0ccMPwR
— AG (@AGHamilton29) March 31, 2021
The change to the correction reportedly prompted “speculation it was ‘stealth edited’ to remove a line that the new law actually expanded opportunities for voters,” Fox News wrote in an article.
AJC told Fox News in a statement that its original correction was “open to misinterpretation” and was therefore “changed to improve clarity.”
“Specifically, the reference to experts’ view referred only to a very limited aspect of the law that relates to hours of the day that early voting is offered,” AJC said according to Fox News.