Maggie Haberman reports for the NYT:

The billionaire philanthropist George Soros, whose first major involvement in politics was with a large-scale voter mobilization effort in the 2004 presidential race, is funding a Democratic legal fight against restrictive voting laws.

Mr. Soros became involved last year when Marc Elias, one of the top Democratic lawyers specializing in voter protection issues, began exploring a series of federal suits in advance of the 2016 election, according to Mr. Soros’s political adviser, Michael Vachon.

Their goal is to try to influence voting rules in states where Republican governors and Republican-led legislatures have enacted new election laws since 2010, and to be ready to intervene when additional measures may be passed over the next 17 months.

Mr. Soros is prepared to spend $5 million or more on the effort, Mr. Vachon said. Two suits that he is supporting were filed in Ohio and in Wisconsin last month, and he is also funding a case Mr. Elias is involved with in North Carolina.

Wow. This is going to make The Voting Wars even hotter in 2016. No one is more of a bogeyman on the right than Soros (a point I explore in my Voting Wars book).