Los Angeles Times (Commentary): Why MLB should consider moving the 2021 All-Star game from Atlanta

These are the words of the only baseball player to have his number retired by every major league team: “The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.”

Jackie Robinson said that in 1969. That remains a vital issue today, and Major League Baseball ought to take a bold position in support of Robinson’s vision.

Not with a statement full of carefully crafted words, but with decisive action. If Georgia persists in pursuing laws that will make it harder to vote, and disproportionately so in Black communities, MLB should move the 2021 All-Star game out of Atlanta. …

Georgia legislators have not settled on a final plan. Among provisions most recently discussed: limiting in-person voting ahead of election day, limiting absentee voting, limiting the locations to drop off a completed ballot, and requiring additional layers of identification in order to cast a ballot.

“This is Jim Crow in a suit and a tie,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, told The Times.

Dennis said the data her group has studied show the effects of the proposed restrictions would have the greatest impact upon Black and other minority voters.

“This is definitely an attack on the voting freedoms and the gains we’ve made in the last 60 years,” she said.