The numbers are grim. Republicans are winning at normalizing voter suppression | David Sirota

Voter ID laws - which are sculpted to make it harder to vote - are wildly popular with voters, according to surveys

Voter suppression has been around for as long as the republic. Stories of subterfuge and ballot box-stuffing schemes are such a part of American political folklore, there's an entire book about them. So in one sense, there is nothing particularly novel about Republican politicians' efforts to rig the vote, or the important revelations that rightwing groups and corporate officials are coordinating state-level campaigns to make it harder to vote.

However, a new nugget of polling data illustrates that something more fundamental has happened: voter suppression is no longer a plot engineered in the shadows and denied in public, for fear of criticism by a population that considers such measures grotesque. Instead, voter suppression is having its coming-out party - because more and more Americans now consider it to be a perfectly legitimate and even laudable campaign tactic.