White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pressured on Monday by liberal and conservative members of the media over President Biden’s opposition to a new Georgia voting law after winning “Pinocchios” by fact-checkers for having made false statements about its provisions.
Last week, Biden urged Major League Baseball to move its July star game to Atlanta in protest and MLB took the advice, outraging Republicans who say the law was portrayed and attacked inaccurately.
Biden received the “Four Pinocchios” award from the Washington Post, which approved his nomination, for spreading misinformation about the impact of state law on voting hours.
The law does not change the hours of election day, but extends early voting by adding a mandatory second Saturday. It also states that counties have the option to open two Sundays and allow counties to extend early voting hours beyond normal business hours.
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Psaki Monday in his daily press session about Biden’s inaccurate statements, even during the ESPN interview in which he expressed support for the boycott in Atlanta.
“Will the President change his way of talking about Georgia’s new voting law? Because in that interview that you referred to, he said that the law would end up voting at five when the working people finished coming down and said that he would end up voting hours before so that the workers could not vote after his turn ended. .but the Washington Post gave this clam ‘four Pinocchios’ because that part of the law gives counties the option to extend voting hours, ”Doocy asked.
Psaki responded that “basically, the president doesn’t think it should be made harder to vote, but it should be easier. And this bill makes it more difficult to solicit and return a vote by absence, it sinks the length of Georgia’s election, making it difficult for large jurisdictions to offer early voting. It imposes new rigid restrictions on the ability of local officials to set voting hours to suit the needs of voters in their county. These are all pieces of the bill. So his view is that we need to make it easier and not harder to vote, and that will continue to be what he advocates. “
Georgia law requires photo identification to obtain an absentee ballot and reduces the time to vote in absentia. It also allows state officials to take possession of local polling stations in response to alleged misconduct.
A different journalist, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, asked Psaki in a follow-up question: “The president recognizes that the new law doesn’t change election day voting hours, right?”
To this, said Psaki, who seemed to repeat the statement that was worth to Biden the Pinocchios: “Nor does it extend them to vote in advance. It makes early voting shorter. Therefore, there are many components of the legislation that concern him. and that is what he was expressing ”.