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Notes -
"The legislature" doesn't request data. Someone in the legislature did, according to some procedure, which is not set forth in the quoted section. Later in the opinion (pgs. 13-15) the language is changed to "legislators requested," which could mean that individual lawmakers asked for the data, but isn't dispositive. I do not know, but suspect, that the data would have been added to the record by progressives explicitly for the purpose of teeing up this challenge - it's not exactly a new position that the left regards Voter ID and anything but the most cursory controls on absentee- and early balloting as racist, nor is it a new charge that the GOP rejects this characterization and claims to support these policies on their own merits and for race-neutral reasons. This, obviously, would throw some water on the "those racists investigated just how they could screw over the blacks and then went and did it" narrative.
Moreover, the discontinuance of methods one group disproportionately uses is not evidence of discriminatory intent so long as adequate and facially race-neutral mechanisms of voting exist which are open to all. There is no general right to a long pre-election early-balloting window, whatever the color of one's skin, nor is there a requirement that outside organizations be allowed to do the thing that (likely) killed Edgar Allen Poe and conduct prospective voter cattle-drives. Nor is there a racial component to Voter ID requirements (provided that the Government also has race-neutral methods of distributing government-issued ID) - as has been stated many times, both here and many other places, just about every developed (and most developing) nations have some sort of Voter ID requirement, and do not regard the matter as particularly controversial.
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