I have a piece up at Greg's place about Republicans' efforts all over the country to make it more difficult for Democratic-leaning constituencies to cast ballots. In Florida, for example, Republicans are prepared to roll back former Gov. Charlie Crist's efforts to re-enfranchise ex-felons.
One of the more obvious campaigns is the effort to prevent college students from voting, and Campus Progress has a nice map explaining what the laws are like by state:
This is political science 101 -- you reward your constituencies while punishing those of your rivals. The efforts to disenfranchise college students are really egregious, but I have a really visceral emotional reaction to felony disenfranchisement laws. College students tend to go on to live fairly comfortable lives. Felony disenfranchisement laws are nothing more than a mean-spirited partisan assault on people with negligible political influence who are in the process of trying to claw their way back from the margins of society. Florida Republicans are just stomping on their fingers hoping to watch them tumble down the cliff, because it might give them an edge in a close election.
The obvious historical irony is that Reconstruction-era felony disenfranchisement laws were once passed by Democrats to disenfranchise blacks because they voted Republican. Now, Republicans support such laws because they make it more difficult for Democratic-leaning constituencies to cast ballots. To say that such laws are motivated by partisanship rather than racism doesn't really redeem them all that much.
