‘Suppression’: MSNBC Continues To Spread Debunked Narrative About Georgia Voting Laws

NBC News’ Washington correspondent Yamiche Alcindor and MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace pushed the debunked narrative yet again Monday that Georgia’s voting laws amount to “suppression” despite a record breaking turn out of Georgians ahead of Tuesday’s primaries.

Speaking on Deadline, Wallace first said that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s “role in voter suppression in the state of Georgia was so reprehensible that baseball moved its All-Star [game].”

Alcindor then falsely claimed Republicans believe black people don’t deserve fair access to the polls. (RELATED: Remember ‘Jim Crow 2.0’? Voting In Georgia Surges After Democrats Complained About ‘Racist’ Republican Rules)

“Not to totally ruin your optimism, but the reason that communities of color in Georgia don’t have the same access to the polls is a lie. It’s b.s. As your reporting and Nick’s entire body of reporting on the voter suppression laws will prove, they took away access to the polls on the back of a big lie in service of Donald Trump,” Wallace said.

“They took access absolutely because of a lie and also I would say that there is also racism in there. It’s the lie and racism, which is a lie which is that these black people don’t deserve the access to citizenship in the way that other Americans do, that they haven’t worked for it and they don’t understand the weight of American democracy and as a result we need to make decisions for them, I think those things are so intertwined in this country,” Alcindor said.

Alcindor’s comments come as Georgia sees a record-breaking turnout of voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary. The state saw roughly 800,000 Georgians cast an early in-person vote as of Friday, according to The Washington Post. That is three times the number of early in-person votes cast in 2018 and higher than in 2020, according to the report.

Patsy Reid, a 70-year-old black woman, told The Post despite the rhetoric she heard about the legislation, she had no issues at the polls.

“I had heard that they were going to try to deter us in any way possible because of the fact that we didn’t go Republican on the last election, when Trump didn’t win,” Reid reportedly said. “To go in there and vote as easily as I did and to be treated with the respect that I knew I deserved as an American citizen – I was really thrown back.”

The law, known as The Election Integrity Act of 2021, includes several provisions expanding voting opportunities, such as mandating “two Saturday voting days and two optional Sunday voting days” prior to the general election. The legislation also requires three weeks of early voting and expands the hours the polls are open, among other provisions.

The legislation, however, came under intense criticism from Democrats, who alleged the laws amounted to voter suppression and were racist.