The various discussions of Trump and voting raise questions about the position conservatives and Republicans have taken on the most contentious voting-related issue of recent years, the fight over voter ID. For a long time, conservatives and Republicans have advocated commonsense measures to ensure the integrity of elections. Those measures boiled down to one thing: a voter should be able to prove who he or she is when voting. The solution, voter ID, was not only reasonable but publicly supported and approved by the courts — after all, if one has to present ID to board a plane or buy Sudafed, why is it overly burdensome to require the same to vote?

Democrats have long responded by accusing conservatives and Republicans of attempting to suppress the vote. Conservatives and Republicans strongly denied the charge. But now, with the new conservative/Republican arguments made in the context of Trump’s rise — a test for voting, limited-participation elections, condemnations of democracy in general — it’s hard not to wonder whether Democrats were right about the other side all along. There are clearly some conservatives and Republicans who dislike the voters’ choice — Trump — so much that they would limit the voters’ right to choose.