The standard line on vote suppression is either that it’s overtly racist (because those most disadvantaged are members of minority groups) or that it’s driven by such electoral mercilessness that concerns about the racial disparity of the impact gets treated as an irrelevancy. Republicans want to win power, in other words, and they don’t much care about who gets hurt in the process (as long as the ultimate victim is the Democratic Party).
But the peculiar fact is that in 2020 expanded ballot access didn’t just help Democrats. It boosted Republicans, too, contributing to the party’s significant gains with Hispanics and to its more modest but still noteworthy increase in support from Black voters. And of course it also helped with the much whiter voters who more typically cast ballots for Republicans — voters who live in states where legislatures and governors are now nonetheless working to make voting more difficult in future elections.
Republicans are acting like a shrinking or dying party that can only win by placing obstacles in the way of its opponents making it to the polls — when the evidence shows that the GOP is very much in the game and could benefit just as much as Democrats by lowering barriers to voting. How pathetic is that?
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