Must-read Miami Herald:

This isn’t Bull Connor siccing German shepherds on people. It’s also nothing like Florida’s Jim Crow-era constitutional provision denying former felons the right to vote in a state where more than half the prison population is black.

This is the Republican Party changing election-year rules to keep the voter-registration rolls from quickly growing more Democratic.

“I don’t see it as voter suppression,” said Daniel A Smith, a University of Florida political scientist who is studying the new law’s effects. “This is more an effort to constrain voter participation under the guise of fighting fraud.”

Smith points out that the data clearly show the elections law disproportionately affects black and Hispanic voters.