How boycotts can backfire

Georgians who are being punished for voting Republican in 2018 - even though they voted Democrat in 2020.

If you’ve been following the controversy over Georgia’s new laws governing voting, you likely fall into one of three camps:

• it’s absolutely no big deal, and the fact that Republicans just happen to be ramming it through after the Orange God-King declared his election loss tainted by fraud is pure coincidence.

• it’s Jim Crow 2.0 and the state of Georgia and every company headquartered there should be boycotted until the law is repealed and maybe we need another Sherman to burn Atlanta to the ground again.

• the law is very questionable, but not so bad that a boycott is justified.

I am firmly in the third camp, which feels like a very lonely place these days. The Washington Post has a pretty balanced summary of what the law does and doesn’t do. Many of the most egregious provisions didn’t make it into the final bill, and it actually leaves Georgia with more lenient voting restrictions than some deep-blue states. But the shadows of Trump’s Big Lie about the election, and Georgia’s history o…