Jill Lawrence

USA TODAY

The time for denial is over.

If you want to quantify the distance Republicans have traveled since its “party of Lincoln” days, look away from Donald Trump long enough to read the federal court ruling that struck down a North Carolina voting law. It’s as damning a document as you will ever encounter.

The evidence shows the state party as an institution that conspired — OK, schemed — to suppress the votes of one particular race. We are not talking about a few bad apples, a few hyped up white supremacists, or a single erratic presidential nominee with no brakes on his mouth.

We are talking about a legislature that requested racial breakdowns on various aspects of voting behavior, noted which were most common among African Americans, then amended a voting bill to eliminate or restrict them. We are talking about a governor who signed that bill into law. And we are talking about people who obviously did not cover their tracks. In their circles, perhaps, what they did was acceptable and reasonable, and they didn’t realize how it would be perceived outside their backwards bubble.

Republicans have been accelerating their march to demographic suicide since Trump blared his hostility toward Muslims, Hispanics and immigrants on the first day of his campaign. The 4th circuit ruling, with its crystal clear tracing of not just impact but intent, drags African Americans into the circle of fire.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republicans can insist all they want that the GOP is not a racist party, and obviously not everyone in it is — not even close, not even a majority. But the ruling that North Carolina Republicans “surgically” targeted African Americans to deprive them of voting rights is as blatant as Trump’s attacks on other minorities. “Winning an election does not empower anyone in any party to engage in purposeful racial discrimination,” the three-judge panel said.

Referring to the state’s “pre-1965 history of pernicious discrimination,” the judges said the voting law imposes the first meaningful restrictions since that date. And it came into being “literally within days” of the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision releasing North Carolina and other states from having to pre-clear voting access changes with the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act.

So what happened within hours of that decision? Lawmakers announced they would turn a small, unremarkable bill on ID requirements into a large bill stuffed with new restrictions. Guided by the study of racial voting patterns they requested, the restrictions killed or limited IDs, time periods, registration methods and other mechanisms disproportionately used by black people.

That’s a tragedy for democracy. It’s also tragic in that a history of oppression has shaped how and when African Americans vote, and that made them easy targets. In North Carolina, the court wrote, African Americans are “disproportionately likely to move, be poor, less educated, have less access to transportation, and experience poor health.” So they especially needed alternatives to drivers’ licenses as IDs, such as other types of government photo ID; same-day registration with personal help available; an extra week of early voting to increase their odds of being able to make it to the polls or get transportation from their church. All of that and more was eliminated.

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Why Republicans would choose a racist path is incomprehensible on moral grounds, and political ones as well. After Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, some in the party pushed comprehensive immigration reform as a way to make progress with Hispanic voters. I suggested they help lead a drive for federal voting reforms as a way to improve the voting experience and telegraph goodwill to minorities. When Trump fever has faded, if it ever does, GOP members of Congress might want to consider helping to restore federal supervision of voting access under the Voting Rights Act.

What do they have to lose? In a CNN/ORC poll taken after both conventions, non-white voters favored Hillary Clinton over Trump 72% to 7%.

The appeals court panel said the state’s “very justification" for objecting to Sunday voting was that disproportionately black and Democratic counties allowed it. In other words, the panel wrote, African Americans had “too much access to the franchise.” And that, it concluded, “comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times.”

The whole law is a smoking gun in a much broader sense, one that exposes the institutional, integral role of racism in the Republican drive to grab and hold power; one that puts the lie to the fictions that non-racist Republicans hold tight: That they are color-blind, a welcoming party, a party that judges people on their merits and character.

This is a party that cannot hold back the demographic tide, try as it might. It will adapt or die.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence

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