Some of the most consequential Republican attacks on democracy happen at the state level
A map from the Brennan Center for Justice shows every state that passed a restriction on the franchise between 2010 and 2019.
These restrictions, ranging from voter ID laws to felon disenfranchisement, were generally passed by Republican majorities with the intent of hurting turnout among Democratic-leaning constituencies.
Republican state legislators were sometimes explicit about this:
“Voter ID ... is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,” then-state House Majority Leader Mike Turzai bragged during the 2012 presidential election cycle.
Because Republicans dominated the 2010 midterm elections, Republican statehouses got to control the post-2010 census redistricting process at both the House and state legislative level,
leading to extreme gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states unlike anything in Democratic ones.
Conservative control of the Supreme Court enabled this state-level push.
In 2013, the Court struck down the Voting Rights Act’s “preclearance” requirement
— that states with a history of racial discrimination would be required to get permission from the Justice Department on their maps and other major changes to electoral law.
In 2019, another Court ruling paved the way for further partisan gerrymandering.