David Catron writes for the American Spectator about problematic claims of voter suppression.

The sound and fury with which the Democrats, the legacy media, and virtue-signaling CEOs greeted Georgia’s new election integrity statute has inevitably included portentous accusations of voter suppression. Peach State Republicans, we are told, are part of a multi-state GOP conspiracy to disfranchise minority voters by restricting ballot access. The plot involves such horrors as requiring everyone to provide identification when they vote and compelling them to cast ballots in their own precincts. Combined with such outrages as fixed time frames for returning mail-in votes, coherent rules for securing ballot drop boxes, and removal of dead people from voter rolls, these laws allegedly portend the return of Jim Crow.

The Jim Crow canard, however, doesn’t work for this particular conspiracy theory. According to the “nonpartisan” Brennan Center for Justice, “As of March 24, legislators have introduced 361 bills with restrictive provisions in 47 states. That’s 108 more than the 253 restrictive bills tallied as of February 19, 2021.” It is also 36 more states than the 11 that made up the Confederacy and subsequently imposed Jim Crow laws. About three-quarters of the states considering the “restrictive” election laws listed by the Brennan Center can’t possibly be associated with the Old South by anyone remotely literate in American history. …

… This is the “Big Lie” narrative. It portrays former President Trump as Svengali and Republican legislators as mindless zombies completely in his thrall. It also discounts any claim that election laws were violated in swing states during the 2020 election. This ignores recent rulings by state courts that Democratic officials broke election laws. …

… According to the “Big Lie” narrative, these violations of election laws — and others that have been studiously under-reported — don’t constitute valid reasons for state legislatures to alter their election laws. Never mind that the Constitution stipulates, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”