The 2020 general election is now more than four months old but it seemingly will not go away.
The fact that Georgia eventually went in favor of current president Joe Biden still has many boiling under the collar. Lawsuits were filed and lawsuits were dismissed even by judges appointed by Republicans.
In our state, several elected Republican officials were thrown under the bus by an angry portion of voters. Just like President Trump, they wanted the results overturned.
The fact that Georgia’s Republican governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state each said there was no evidence of massive voter fraud, the results were still protested. More demands calling for overturns were made and are still being made.
A push was then created by many elected Republicans in our state to make it harder for some to vote. After all, if you don’t like the outcome then change the rules and see if that works better for you.
One question that has never been answered is why some statewide elected Republican officials would want to throw the election for Joe Biden. It makes no sense. There has been no evidence showing that is what they wanted, but people still shout loud and shout often that the voting process had been corrupted.
It’s the sore loser complex that we see all too often in sports. If our team loses then it had to be because the other team cheated. Heck, I am even guilty of this.
The other team got away with what should have been penalties. The other team ran plays which are technically against the rules. The other team paid the referees. And there is the old and silly adage of complaining that the television announcers were pulling for the other team. Yikes.
It is funny when you are honest about it. Did the referees miss some calls in the game in question? Of course, they did. Did the opposing team have a roster full of illegally recruited players? Of course not.
Was there a vote here or a vote there that was not on the up and up? You bet. It happens every time an election takes place. Were there millions and millions of illegally cast votes? Of course not.
There was no way that enough voter fraud existed that would have made Donald Trump the winner in the 2020 race. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that the voting was somehow rigged.
The votes were recounted numerous times in Georgia alone. The results did not change. The votes could have been counted another 100 times but it would have still not changed the outcome in terms of Georgia’s electoral votes.
For the record, this is not a show of support from this columnist for Joe Biden. My vote actually went to Libertarian Jo Jorgensen.
Now some Republicans in Georgia want to change many of the laws concerning the voting process so it dares not happen again. The ironic part of it all is that these laws were actually put in place by Republicans to help Republicans keep Democrats from winning.
In the end, the efforts didn’t work (at least in some 2020 instances) so now the laws need to be changed. Oh, that item about Republicans during the Sonny Perdue governorship putting the laws in place….let’s not talk about that.
We should always be wary of any politician belonging to any party that wants to make it more difficult to vote. There is nothing wrong with presenting a proper ID to vote. But to deliberately make it tougher for a certain group of registered voters to go to the polls is nothing more than suppression and it should not be allowed in the present day and time.
The 2022 election in Georgia is going to be one of the more fascinating ones to watch in recent memory. It is going to be ugly. It is going to be expensive. It is going to likely turn our stomachs before all is said and done.
As historic as the 2020 vote in our state was, what awaits in the works in 20 months is going to make the previous vote seem like a Sunday afternoon picnic.
Chris Bridges is a former sports editor of The Walton Tribune and The Covington News. You can email comments about this column to pchrisbridges@gmail.com.
