Texas billed me $35 for my new license; with transportation to and from DPS and the Bexar County elections office, the cost of my registering to vote in Texas topped $80.* For anyone who is missing any of those documents and would need to obtain them, the price would be far higher. I work from home, so I have the privilege of being able to visit these facilities during working hours, and I can afford both the cost of transportation and the necessary documents. I live in the city, so public facilities are not difficult for me to get to. For people with more traditional jobs or who have less disposable income, these barriers stand much higher.

Read: Voter suppression is warping democracy

Moreover, Texas has all but banned voter-registration drives, which is how many low-income and minority voters are registered, through laws that bar anyone but a deputy voter registrar in a particular county from registering voters in that county. If they tried to register a voter in another county, even they would be breaking the law. From trying to register to casting a ballot, it is hard to vote in Texas, maybe harder than in any other state.

That’s by design. Although Republican dominance of Texas long predates these new voting restrictions, their implementation is part of a national GOP strategy of maintaining political control through scorched-earth culture-war campaigns that target historically disfavored minorities and the disenfranchisement of the populations whose growth and influence could challenge that control. It is a consciously counter-majoritarian strategy for a party that wants to maintain its power indefinitely, even if most of the American electorate opposes it.

Immediately after the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Texas Republicans moved to implement a voter-ID law that would have the effect of making voting more difficult for Democratic-leaning constituencies. In 2014, a federal judge found that the law was an unconstitutional “poll tax” that deliberately discriminated against black and Latino voters, who were more likely to lack the required forms of ID or have a difficult time obtaining them. In response, the Texas legislature made the law slightly more lenient, allowing Texas residents to vote without ID if they sign a document stipulating, under penalty of arrest, that they faced a “reasonable impediment” in obtaining an ID. By 2018, the legal battle was over and Texas Republicans had won.

In-person voter fraud is rarer than getting struck by lightning. That said, the requirement that people prove their identity at the polls is reasonable. But there are many ways to do that even without requiring a photo ID—let alone skewing the list of acceptable IDs toward those that voters from one particular party are more likely to have. Under federal law, voters are required to prove their identity before voting in federal elections, but those requirements are more permissive than the ones adopted under strict photo ID laws, allowing voters to provide documents such as pay stubs and bank statements.