WASHINGTON D.C. (AP) — The White House says President Joe Biden didn’t push Major League Baseball to move the All Star game out of Atlanta after the state approved new restrictive voting laws.
The MLB decision to move the All Star game, comes as the CEOs of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola have also condemned Georgia’s new voting law as being too restrictive.
The decision to pull the July 13 game from Atlanta’s Truist Park amounts to the first economic backlash against Georgia for the voting law that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp quickly signed into law March 25.
Kemp has insisted the law’s critics have mischaracterized what it does, yet GOP lawmakers adopted the changes largely in response to false claims of fraud in the 2020 elections by former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
The law includes new restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are run.
“We’ve not not asked corporations to take specific actions. That’s not our focus here,” said Psaki.
“Our focus is on and continuing to convey that it’s important that voting is easier, not harder, that when there are laws in place that make it harder, we certainly express opposition to those laws.”
