Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp dismissed corporate backlash towards voting laws he signed into law on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Wednesday afternoon.

The governor signed a sweeping GOP-backed election bill into law final week that civil rights advocates say disproportionately hurts voters of colour. The laws provides new identification necessities to absentee voting, limits poll drop containers and prohibits providing meals or water to voters in line, amongst different provisions.

“I’m glad to take care of it,” Kemp mentioned, referencing the backlash from enterprise leaders in Georgia and the U.S. over the voting law. “If they wish to have a debate concerning the deserves and the info of the invoice, then we should always do this.”

Kemp’s feedback come after prominent Black business executives urged corporate leaders within the U.S. to oppose restrictive voting laws following the passage of the Georgia election law.

“Corporations have to face up. There isn’t any center floor,” Ken Chenault, former American Express CEO and one of the first Black chief executives at a Fortune 500 firm, mentioned Wednesday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Merck CEO Ken Frazier on “Squawk Box” mentioned: “Free and honest entry to the poll was by no means a partisan challenge. It’s a elementary constitutional proper.”

Quite a lot of corporations issued statements Wednesday following the Chenault and Frazier interview.

“I might encourage these CEOs to have a look at different states that they are doing enterprise in and examine what the actual info are to Georgia,” Kemp mentioned.

The governor highlighted provisions within the laws similar to growing in-person early voting hours in most Georgia counties as examples of why Republicans consider the invoice expands voter entry.

Civil rights groups earlier in March known as on main firms headquartered in Georgia to unequivocally oppose voting restrictions proposed within the state legislature. Advocates focused six main corporations — Aflac, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Southern Company and UPS — with demonstrations, telephone banks and campaigns in native press and on social media.

Corporations responded with broad statements about honest and safe elections with out taking direct stances on payments within the weeks earlier than Kemp signed the brand new law. Following the laws’s passage, some voting rights advocates threatened to boycott Georgia-based companies.

Coca-Cola final week responded to the invoice’s passage with an announcement about voting entry and election integrity with out taking a stance on the law. In a statement Monday, Coca-Cola govt Alfredo Rivera mentioned the corporate was “upset” within the law.

On CNBC’s “Power Lunch” Wednesday afternoon, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey mentioned the laws is “unacceptable” and “a step backwards.”

Delta CEO Ed Bastian in an announcement final week mentioned the signed laws “improved significantly in the course of the legislative course of.”

In a reversal Wednesday, Bastian blasted the new Georgia election law, calling it “unacceptable.”

“After having time to now absolutely perceive all that’s within the invoice, coupled with discussions with leaders and workers within the Black neighborhood, it is evident that the invoice consists of provisions that can make it more durable for a lot of underrepresented voters, notably Black voters, to train their constitutional proper to elect their representatives. That is incorrect,” Bastian mentioned in a staff memo Wednesday morning.

In an announcement earlier Wednesday to CNBC, Kemp defended the law and particularly took goal at Delta’s chief govt. 

“Today’s assertion by Delta CEO Ed Bastian stands in stark distinction to our conversations with the corporate, ignores the content material of the brand new law and sadly continues to unfold the identical false assaults being repeated by partisan activists,” Kemp mentioned. 

“Mr. Bastian ought to examine voting legal guidelines in Georgia — which embody no-excuse absentee balloting, on-line voter registration, 17 days of early voting with an extra two elective Sundays, and automated voter registration when acquiring a driver’s license — with different states Delta Airlines operates in,” he added.

The debate about election legal guidelines comes amid a wave of Republican-backed voter restrictions proposed in state legislatures throughout the nation. The Brennan Center for Justice tracked 253 payments in 43 states with provisions that will limit voting entry as of Feb. 19.

Conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud led violent pro-Trump rioters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an try to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election.

The lethal rebellion got here after Republican leaders, together with former President Donald Trump, regularly unfold claims that mail-in and early voting led to widespread voter fraud, regardless of no proof of such fraud.

— CNBC’s Kevin Stankiewicz, Jessica Bursztynsky and Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.