Two of the companies that have been the most vocal in their opposition to Georgia’s new voter laws reportedly donated a combined nearly $1 million to Republican lawmakers who introduced similar voting laws in their own states – proving once again that many social-justice-loving companies are only as “woke” as it takes to score points on social media.
A report from Public Citizen, which isn’t favorable to Georgia’s new laws requiring voters to show an I.D. at the polls and limiting mail-in voting, accuses Coca-Cola and AT&T, both of which have come out against the laws, of talking out of both sides of their corporate mouths, saying the companies have poured hundreds of thousands into the campaign coffers of lawmakers who’ve pushed for similar voter laws in multiple states.
AT&T, for example, donated than $810,000 between 2015 and 2020 to Republican lawmakers around the country who’ve supported similar voter I.D. laws and other measures to protect election integrity, which Public Citizen describes as contributing to “voter suppression.”
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The Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company, which also quickly came out against Georgia’s laws, has donated more than $130,000 to GOP lawmakers in support of their own states’ election protection bills.
Overall, the report estimates that since 2015, corporations have donated somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million to lawmakers who've supported election integrity efforts.
Given their longstanding donations to these same lawmakers when it benefits their business, pretending to disavow voter I.D. laws and other election measures when it benefits them publicly amounts to nothing more than “PR stunts,” Public Citizen adds.
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“Corporations seeking to demonstrate their reverence for our democracy could best do so by ending their attempts to influence the outcomes of elections at the federal and state levels,” the group adds.
Of course, while Public Citizen strongly condemns just about every state measure designed to protect election integrity and maligns them as intentionally targeting minorities for political gain, their point still stands: “woke” companies rarely follow their own rules when it doesn’t suit them, and are quick to change with the wind when it does.
"They like our public policy when we're doing things that benefit them," Georgia House Speaker David Ralston said following Delta Airline’s public condemning of the state’s new voter laws, after which the Georgia state legislature voted to strip the company of tens of millions of dollars worth of tax breaks. "You don't feed a dog that bites your hand."