Discussion on question by tim: Are there cases of Democrats engaging in voter suppression?

@ubadub slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism

Also, in general American laws should be assumed racist until shown otherwise, in the same way that one would assume 12th century French laws were pro-feudal until proven otherwise.

Talking about whether a law is deliberately or not deliberately racist is just apologism for racism. Laws don't have intentionality, they only have effects. @JaredSmith

@JaredSmith I think that would be too broad for this question. The Wiki link has some details, eg 'new voting provisions targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision," and that [...] legislators had acted with clear "discriminatory intent'; 'If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election'; etc. If you seriously doubt the fact that Republicans purposefully suppress minority votes - a fact supported by court decisions and admitted to by some Republicans themselves - feel free to open a question about it here or at skeptics.SE.

@JaredSmith BTW I didn't call these voter suppression tacticts racist. For some Republicans, the motivation is very likely racism. For others, it's merely a tactic to win elections. The (desired) impact is of course the same in either case: the suppression of minority votes.

I'm not saying it's not the case, I'm saying it's not a given: it needs to be appropriately cited. Also, there are a lot of e.g. voter ID laws, and a few specific known cases of deliberately targeting minority voters (which I at least would call racism, even if statistically motivated), but your question seems to be painting all such laws with a rather broad brush. If presenting sufficient evidence in your question makes it too broad, then the question itself is too broad to fit into the context of a stack exchange site.

Let me put it another way, if you had written the question as "Have the Democrats ever done things like x and y that some Republicans did here and here (with appropriate links)?" then I would not have an objection. Avoids attributing the behaviors to all Republicans, avoids imputing motive to all e.g. voter ID laws, restricts the conversation to known instances of abuse/ill intent, etc.

@MichaelJ. The article is well sourced and easier to link to than the various individual sources. If you doubt any specific facts, feel free to open a question here or at skeptics.SE. And I was referring to voting time restrictions: "Republican lawmakers requested data on various voting practices, broken down by race [...] they cut back on early voting [...] Later, the North Carolina GOP sent out a press release celebrating the decline in early voting by African Americans"

@MichaelJ. Non-wiki link: 'The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina's 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. "After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days," the court found.'

@Dunk And again, I linked to evidence showing that these sort of laws were enacted "with discriminatory intent" and targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision". There is nothing defamatory about laying out facts. If you doubt the evidence, please open a question about it.

@T.E.D. speaking of real people with real feelings, I live in a Red state. Regardless of my personal opinions, most of my friends, family, and coworkers identify as Republican. Virtually all of them support voter ID laws. Are you suggesting that all of them, all of them, are racists? De facto or de jure?

Prior to the Southern Realignment of 1964, the Democratic Party was the more socially conservative, racist, and Southern-centric party. They would have been the party more likely to commit voter suppression up until roughly this year. That is why, if I've correctly surmised the intent and assumptions of this question, it should have asked for any examples since 1964. As agc's answer demonstrates, examples prior to 1964 were common and not hard to find.

-1 for the implicit assumption that voter ID laws are designed to suppress minority voting.