There is little doubt that race continues to infect the judgments of state officials as they pass laws that secure access to the ballot — unequally. Wishful thinking by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) notwithstanding, America clearly suffers the consequences of 400 years of race inequality, still. Yet it is a mistake to approach the question of voting rights reform focused on the issue of race alone. Not only is that frame less likely to win support. It is more likely to trigger an overly demanding burden of constitutional review.
It is less likely to win support because Americans have developed automatic, some might say, allergic reactions to the charge of racism—on both sides. On one side, those charges are credited automatically; on the other, they are just as automatically rejected. To place the question of an equal freedom to vote within that much more fraught and general struggle is to burden the battle with issues it need not bear.
Because regardless of whether we believe that the 350+ laws now being considered in state legislatures across the nation are motivated by race or not, they are certainly motivated by politics. No one could doubt the partisan purposes behind many of the restrictions built into these new state laws. These are plainly rules aiming to burden the freedom to vote, solely because of the political party…
