Republicans would be better off if no poor people voted even though some of them vote republican.

I don't really like this. I don't vote and don't want people to know that because of their high horsed lectures I will be forced to hear...

Obviously anywhere this is happening the republicans have enough of a majority that they don't need to compromise. I think we all know how much republicans love to compromise anyway.

A couple things:

1) As noted upthread by ifucankeepit, the Texas law allows gun licenses but not Texas University IDs to be used for voting. That's pretty obvious bias.

2) The Tennessee law that Dvaut had a post on allows absentee voter ballots. So a determined fraudster is just going to go the EZ absentee vote route, while a person who can't get an ID might not even know about the absentee ballot option or just might never get an ID at all. Many probably don't even know the law has changed.

So the democrats thought of it, but didn't bother trying because what's the point? Really? No, I guess it's a much better strategy to not attempt to do anything that could possibly ruin the one conspiracy narrative that can be used time and again to energize your base and get the vote out. Let's keep demonizing the enemy by focusing on contrived narratives that create greater divisiveness and keep our constituents distracted from the fact that we are quite possibly just as evil as them if not slightly less ignorant.

Again, there is no reason to do this. At best this is a solution in search of a problem.

When you have no problem and still do things you admit will lower voting eligibility - even if it hit both "sides" equally - its still wrong.

Returning to a pre suffrage era would hit white women equally as hard as black women, so, awesome lets go ahead and do it?

I'd like to reiterate that if it's true that the Dems didn't even bother to suggest this or fight such an "obvious" and easily counterable(trust me, thats a word) attempt at voter suppression because "Why bother? They have strong majorities" Then whoever made that decision, if they claim to care about those poor people's votes they count on are despicable and incompetent and don't deserve to represent anyone.

No doubt. I agree it's wrong. I just think it's counterproductive in the greater scheme of things to go with the most divisive explanation as to their motives without stronger evidence.

It could effect poor white people. It most certainly could. But blacks and racial minorities, non-English speakers (read: poor Latinos) are far more likely to fall prey to being illegitimately disenfranchised than whites since they're more likely to be poor.

The history of Jim Crow laws are instructive here: the creation of grandfather clauses was motivated by the fact that racist white Southerners former strategies (literacy tests and poll taxes) caught up too many poor illiterate whites in the net.

The game isn't to categorically disenfranchise every black person and spare white people the same. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, and of course, some poor white people are going to get caught up in the backwash of a voter ID law and be illegitimately disenfranchised. The point is just to exclude more would-be Democrat voters than GOPers, full-stop. Of course just disenfranchising poor people, period, white or black, isn't exactly a bad strategy for the GOP. Really downtrodden whites aren't their bread and butter base either.

So to that end, sure: maybe the GOP's strategy isn't necessarily and overtly racist like a Klan rally is. Maybe they're just trying to disenfranchise poor people. As it happens, in America, a disproportionate share of poor people happen to also be racial minorities, so it's something of a distinction without a difference.

The Tennessee anecdote is the perfect example of how even an ostensibly and superficially non-racist voter disenfranchisement that just on its face looks like it's targeted towards poor people could really victimize blacks, especially: People hold on to highly irrational beliefs and concerns in the face of contradictory evidence all the time. There's still a lot of racist white people. The GOP knows whites are more likely to be a mid-level, voter-ID-checking bureaucrat than a black person. Make enough arbitrary ID-acquisition requirements, empower the bureaucrats to be judges, and count on the fact you're more likely to have racist white people manning the gates to acquiring the voter IDs than racist blacks, and that's that, strategy created. It wouldn't take much effort for a strategic GOPer Secretary of State to load up whites in heavily black neighborhoods in government-ID-offices.

Some of you guys will poo-poo this as far-fetched, but a cursory investigation of the history of voting rights in America along with an even more superficial examination of the contours of Congressional districts and gerrymandering demonstrate that politicians have gone to tremendous lengths in the past to disenfranchise and/or dilute the power of racial minorities. You don't get Congressional districts like this by accident, and yeah, it takes a lot of time and effort to craft this kind of stuff:

Yeah, my bad. I had the percent/total worked backwards in my head. This doesn't greatly effect my overall argument, however.

What stronger evidence would be required to consider this anything but a blatant attempt to disenfranchise segments of the population that overwhelmingly support the Democrats?

on the ID issue. can't people just use absentee ballots?

sorry if i'm being stupid, only voted in 2 states and haven't thought about an absentee ballot in a decade

Disenfranchiser picture ID imo

If you're really debating honestly on this than you are the most obtuse person on the entire internet. Either way I give up. Someone else can take up the cause.

Look, in my view a much more plausible, simple explanation than a giant coordinated GOP plot is that many of these people actually believe that voter fraud is a very real threat despite the fact that very little voter fraud actually takes place. Yes it's irrational, but as I explained earlier these are people who, for the most part, are no strangers to holding on to irrational views despite little supporting evidence and even much evidence to the contrary eg their religious views and views on climate change.

Further evidence supporting your claim would be, as I said earlier, cases where Dems proposed reasonable alternatives that had less chance of disenfranchising poor voters (like Wookie's suggestion) were shot down or stonewalled by republicans. I'm completely open to being convinced, but saying "Well, why would the Dems even try because the Republicans have strong majorities" is not a very convincing argument.