MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Welcome back. Georgia's new voting bill appears to be sparking progressive outrage — but it's really about H.R. 1. Now, Texas is also moving to shore up its voting rules, with the left calling it Jim Crow 2.0 — a lie. Some states feel it's necessary to clarify the rules after an election during a global pandemic that literally changed everything. Jackie DeAngelis with more on this. Jackie, we had an unprecedented election because of an unprecedented pandemic.
JACKIE DEANGELIS (FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT): That's right, Maria, and I think that's the main point here. As a nation, yes, we adjusted to this pandemic, a national crisis as well, we got through the 2020 election, and we did it successfully together.
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Now with respect to early voting, pre-2020 it wasn't commonplace to keep the polls open a week or more before Election Day. The goal generally was to vote in person if you hadn't mailed in a ballot with a valid reason. So what we're seeing in Georgia, Texas, other states as well, and what the administration is calling Jim Crow 2.0, is that states are simply ensuring that pandemic rules don't apply indefinitely to voting in a post-pandemic world. And it's a principle that is so basic that is causing all of this outrage essentially, Maria.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, I mean, you laid it out perfectly Jackie, that's absolutely right. And we know that when you have a mail-in ballot, it does open the floodgates of fraud. The former AG told me this, former AGs as well as Bill Barr, and the DOJ. So what did we see in the 2020 election? We saw some ballots that went to empty parking lots, they came back completed. We saw some ballots that went to dead people. They came back completed. States want to ensure that mail-in ballots are not the norm, but that's not what H.R. 1 is. Nancy Pelosi's No. 1 priority, election reform, wants mail-in ballots to be the standard.
DEANGELIS: Right, and to your point in the previous segment, they're basically saying we will expand this to make it more accessible for people to vote. We just want signature verification, and we want to make sure that a real live, actual person, a citizen is casting that vote and that it's legal.
BARTIROMO: Well, you might want to call the MLB and make sure they hear this report, Jackie. You might want to call Delta Airlines, send them a link to your reporting, because that was spot-on.