However, the suggestion that his party holds a sincere but misguided belief constituted one of Schultz’s gentler criticisms of the GOP. He hinted that Republicans are trying to gain an electoral advantage by depressing voter turnout.

“It’s just sad when a political party has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics,” Schultz said. “We should be pitching as political parties our ideas for improving things in the future rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at the voting sites and trying to suppress the vote.”

Although Schultz voted for the voter ID bill passed by the Legislature in 2011, now tied up in the courts, he said he now believes that a lack of access to the polls poses a far greater threat to the integrity of state elections than voter fraud.

The course his Republican colleagues are charting, he said, is a depressing departure from the legacy set by those who championed voting rights during Reconstruction and later during the Civil Rights Era.