What about the voter registration drives? Consider Florida. They didn’t ban voter registration laws, but they passed a burdensome law causing organizations like Rock The Vote to abandon their voter registration drives. Even so, the white share of registered voters dropped from 68.5 percent in 2010 to 66.5 percent in 2012. In comparison, the white share of registered voters dropped from 71.9 to 69.1 percent between 2006 and 2008. Overall, the number of newly registered voters dropped from 813,785 between 2006 and 2008 to 717,062 between 2010 and 2012. That’s not necessarily distinguishable from static, especially since the pace of new voter registrations generally declined a bit everywhere, including a state like North Carolina.

It’s possible that taking away early voting days or same day registration is worse for turnout than never having it in the first place, like Virginia. Just how significant the difference might be is hard to say. But in Ohio and Florida, Republicans tried these same tactics and there wasn’t much evidence that it did them very much good. A well-publicized study suggested that 200,000 voters went home because of long-lines in Florida, which were lengthened by the shortened early voting period. 200,000 isn’t nothing—it’s a little more than 2 percent of the electorate. But unless those voters were breaking overwhelmingly for one party, you wouldn’t notice it in the results. And indeed, Obama lost less support in Florida between 2008 and 2012 than any other battleground state. According to the Census, the non-white share of the Florida electorate still dropped from 71 to 67 percent.

There’s no question that North Carolina’s voter law package has a disparate impact on Democratic-leaning voters and turnout. In a democratic society founded on democratic voting principles, the outrage is justified. But when it comes to changing electoral outcomes, the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that the overwhelmingly majority of voters are either unaffected by provisions such as these, or care enough about voting to make sure they get to the ballot box anyway. And since the sliver of affected voters must include some Republicans too, the electoral consequences are so small as to be indiscernible. What is discernible is the steady growth of the non-white share of the electorate. In North Carolina, the white share of registered voters declined from 76 percent in January 2005 to 71 percent in January 2013. Despite the North Carolina GOP’s best efforts to reduce voter registration and turnout, that trend will continue.

This post has been updated.