How Republicans Suppress Voting

Ernest Canning, guest blogging at Brad Friedman's The Brad Blog, writes: 

Voter suppression has long been a staple of American politics, but the tsunami of new restrictions on the polling place now being rammed through by newly-elected Republican majorities in state after state is unprecedented, certainly since the era of Jim Crow was supposed to have been ended by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Canning goes on the explain the felt need for Republicans to suppress votes, not the least of which is the growing unpopularity of that party's policies, its efforts to deliver for its Wall Street benefactors are becoming more blatant, and national demographics are moving away from Republicans, even as they themselves are moving ever further to the right.

Voter suppression is becoming increasingly institutionalized. A good analysis of how it works can be seen at the video below. It is the full-length version of Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections.

Voter suppression does not need to be pervasive to be decisive.