The battle lines are already being drawn for the general election in November, and Democrats are eager to line up African-Americans, Latinos, women, senior citizens and young voters, all of whom the party believes could form a formidable team to thwart a potential Donald Trump presidency and wrest the Senate majority from the GOP.

That is only, however, if all those people will be able to vote. And given the sweeping new regulations and restrictions a number of states have placed on voting, that's not a given.

In this year alone, ten states are implementing laws that usher in new restrictions or hurdles, ranging from cutting early voting to imposing cumbersome voter identification rules, according to tracking by the ACLU, which is battling many of the laws in the courts. Those ten states are home to over 80 million people and account for 129 of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency, the civil liberties group reports.

That's on top of 11 other states that have put new voting restrictions in place since 2010, according to the New York City-based Brennan Center for Justice, a non-profit at New York University School of Law. Of the 21 total states, 16 have restrictions in place for the first time for this year's presidential election. Many, but not all, of the new rules were enabled by a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v Holder, which threw out a critical part of the Voting Rights Act. That section, which required certain states to get "pre-clearance" from a federal court of the Department of Justice before changing voter registration or voter laws, would at least have delayed, and possibly blocked, some of the new laws, says Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voter Rights Project.

Theoretically, all voters in those states are subject to the new rules, which are meant to prevent voter fraud. But the details of the laws – and the demographics of the states that have implemented them – end up having a disproportionately negative impact on the populations that have a harder time acquiring the paperwork necessary to register or to vote, experts and nonpartisan studies say. Women, too, can face rejection when registering to vote because their IDs may feature different name variations due to marriage or divorce.

Damage is done if any eligible voter, regardless of ethnicity, race or gender, is prevented from voting because of onerous restrictions, says Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. But "as a general rule, the new voting restrictions hit certain demographic groups harder than other groups. Low income voters, people of color and very old people" are particularly susceptible to being wrongly barred from participating in the process, she says.

Advocates for the new laws say that is not their intent. They merely want to keep people from victimizing the system – and fellow citizens – by voting more than once, in the wrong place or in someone else's name. "All we're doing is trying to prevent fraud. We're not trying to disenfranchise anyone," says Jay DeLancy, co-founder of the Voter Integrity Project in North Carolina, which has new restrictions in place this year on registration and voting. He notes that his website offers a free ride to eligible voters who need to obtain the proper documents to register to vote.

Whatever the intent, voting rights advocates say certain groups are being hit harder by the changes – and that could be pivotal in swing states and congressional districts.

In 2012, turnout dropped 1.9 percent in Kansas and 2.2 percent in Tennessee, two states which had recently implemented voter restrictions, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A separate GAO report in 2014 found that African-Americans and young people were disproportionately affected by voter ID and other rules, since those groups were less likely to possess the sort of documentation (such as a drivers license) necessary to meet the new regulations. In Kansas, black voter turnout dropped by 3.7 percentage points more than it did for whites, and youth turnout (18 years old) fell by 7.1 percentage points more than it did among 44-53-year-olds, the report said. In Tennessee, African-American turnout fell by 1.5 percentage points more than it did for white voters, and by 1.2 percentage points among 19-23-year-olds, compared to older voters.

Turnout is affected by many things, including enthusiasm for the candidates, campaign turnout operations and even the weather. But the numbers suggest the voter laws are having an impact, analysts say, and that could impact elections.

Texas, for example, has a strict voter ID law, enacted soon after the Shelby decision, that allows certain kinds of ID (including concealed carry permits for guns) but not others (such as student IDs, even those issued by the state of Texas for students in the state university system). That alone makes it harder for young people to vote, Ho says.

Some older citizens might not have a drivers license or a birth certificate, especially if they were delivered by midwives, experts note, so the state offers a free ID to those without drivers licenses. But it can be very cumbersome (and expensive) to make the trip to faraway government offices to get the documentation. "It doesn't make sense for fraud prevention. It does make sense if the purpose of the law is to change the shape of the electorate," Ho says.

Texas is not a presidential battleground state, so neither party is banking on the voter ID law swinging the Electoral College. However, in some local races – in particular, the 23rd congressional district – the law has already shown a likely impact, says Mark Jones, a Rice University professor who co-authored a report on the topic.

In 2014, many voters in the southwestern Texas district erroneously believed they did not have the proper ID to vote, even though they did, Jones says. A public campaign informed people that there was a strict voter ID law in effect, but didn't provide much more information, he says. The Democratic incumbent, Pete Gallegos, narrowly lost to the Republican, Will Hurd, in the district, which is two-thirds Hispanic.

Five out of every six eligible voters discouraged in that election said they would have voted for the Democrat, so "if you actually project out those results, Gallegos has a reasonable claim that had the voter ID law not been in place, he would have won re-election," Jones says. Gallegos is challenging Hurd for his old seat this fall, and the Cook Political Report calls the race a toss-up.

In Arizona, voters in Maricopa County waited in line for hours to vote in the primary on March 22, after officials in the state's most populous county reduced the number of polling stations from 200 to 60. Advocates and voters complained that Hispanic neighborhoods were disproportionately affected by the cutback, which officials say they implemented to cut costs. Whatever the reason, Ho notes, the reduction of polling places would not have been allowed before the Shelby decision, since Arizona is one of the states that had been under federal pre-clearance rules.

In Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday, the law was only recently amended to allow veterans to use their Veterans Administration ID cards to vote (the statute previously allowed active military to use their IDs, but not veterans). "Who did that affect? Homeless veterans," Ho says.

Students in Wisconsin are still at a disadvantage, notes Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also director of the Elections Research Center.

They can show a college ID to vote, but only if that ID has a photo, a signature and an expiration date that is not more than two years out, Burden says. "Most student IDs are not compliant," including those at the University of Wisconsin, he says. In addition, students must show written proof (on a paper or smartphone) that they are paid up on their tuition and fees, he says. Students can use drivers licenses as IDs, but fewer young people nowadays have licenses, according to a University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute study, and students may have out-of-state licenses.