Hotard Huddle

Considering a column I wrote ranks second on google if you search “baseball sucks,” what I am writing today is certainly not status quo. Baseball sure as shit does not suck right now. The MLB gets a break from my normal eye rolling. Not sure how long that will last, but that’s neither here nor there.

The MLB announced that they are pulling from Atlanta in response to the recent voting legislation pushed out by Governor Brian Kemp and other GA Republicans. You know, because they got their fucking asses kicked this election cycle. I will get to that in a minute.

I never thought I would see the day where Major League Baseball would have the balls to pull that kind of political power move in today’s world. Of course Kemp and other Republicans are showing how butthurt they are after the announcement. They can downplay it all they want, but it hits them where it hurts…economically. Considering the majority of the fan base for MLB is old and white, it is certainly not the league you would expect to make a play like this.

Here we are though. It isn’t the first time a sports league has moved a major event in response to deplorable political policy. It also isn’t the first time Republicans have attempted to disenfranchise people from voting.

This aired on one of my favorite TV shows back in 2013…

“Dorothy Cooper is a 96 year old resident in Chattanooga, Tennessee and has been voting for the last 75 years. This year she has been told she can’t. A new law in Tennessee requires residents to show a government issued photo ID in order to vote. Dorothy Cooper doesn’t have a driver license, because Dorothy Cooper doesn’t drive. Dorothy Cooper doesn’t have a passport; a vacation abroad was never in her future.

Tennessee isn’t alone. At this moment, 33 states have proposed or already adopted the same voter ID laws that have disqualified Dorothy Cooper from the one fundamental thing that we all do as Americans. It’s estimated that 11% or roughly 20 million people don’t have government issued voter IDs and will be disenfranchised this November. Why? To crack down on the terrible problem of voter fraud.

Because voter fraud is such a huge problem that during a five year period in the Bush Administration, when 196 million votes were cast, the number of cases of voter fraud reached…

86. Not 86,000. 86. Here’s what that number looks like as a percentage of votes cast.

.00004%. Four one hundred thousandths of a percent.

This would be called a solution without a problem, but it’s not. It’s just a solution to a different problem. Republicans have a hard time getting certain people to vote for them. So life would be a lot easier if certain just weren’t allowed to vote at all.”

Sound familiar?

The New York Times outlined some of the provisions of the new bill. If you love the mouth breathing Tucker Carlson, it’s FaKe NeWs. Yeah yeah yeah. I know.

Here are some of those provisions…

• Less Time to Request Absentee Ballots
• Stricter ID Requirements for Absentee Ballots
• Illegal for Election Officials to Mail Out Absentee Ballots
• Limiting Drop Boxes
• Mobile Voting Centers Banned
• Early Voting Expansion in Smaller Counties, Not Larger Ones (Say that shit out loud)
• Offering Food and Water Illegal (LOL)
• More Difficult to Extend Voting Hours

Long story short. It’s illegal in the places we say it’s illegal is the gist of this bill. I’d like to reiterate that voter fraud is not and has not been a problem.

Now, Kemp and his supporters can sulk in the fact they just took away $100 million from the city of Atlanta.

#StopTheCount