Part of the problem is how solotronics phrased the question. Strictly speaking, until a method codified in law is ruled by courts to be unlawful, it is, in the strict definition of the word, legal.
Just as the suppression of votes by women, ownership rights of men over wives and children, sale of useless (or harmful) patent medicines, and the wholesale slaughter of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the mentally retarded, and others in Germany in the 1930s-1940s was, in the strict sense, legal.
What is also the case, however, in the specific instance of the voter-suppression methods listed is:
1. That there is record of them being specifically adopted with the goal of dissuading specific elements of the public from voting.
2. That similar methods have previously been found unconstitutional and/or illegal.
A thing being "legal" is not the only test of its goodness. A thing being strictly legal today is not an assurance that it will be legal tomorrow. A thing having a history of strongly resembling tactics used to, and being specifically presented as a way of, disenfranchising voters in ways that have been found specifically unconstitutional also generally bodes poorly for it.
Just as the suppression of votes by women, ownership rights of men over wives and children, sale of useless (or harmful) patent medicines, and the wholesale slaughter of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the mentally retarded, and others in Germany in the 1930s-1940s was, in the strict sense, legal.
What is also the case, however, in the specific instance of the voter-suppression methods listed is:
1. That there is record of them being specifically adopted with the goal of dissuading specific elements of the public from voting.
2. That similar methods have previously been found unconstitutional and/or illegal.
A thing being "legal" is not the only test of its goodness. A thing being strictly legal today is not an assurance that it will be legal tomorrow. A thing having a history of strongly resembling tactics used to, and being specifically presented as a way of, disenfranchising voters in ways that have been found specifically unconstitutional also generally bodes poorly for it.