Voter ID laws disproportionately affect racial minorities to this day, and are tantamount to a poll tax until the State bears the burden of providing ID.
Regardless that was the motivation. It may have been a failed effort, but it was absolutely the intention and it's got to hurt being a black person in this day and age and know that lawmakers are still looking for ways to exclude you from our democratic system.
Whose motivation? People who support Voter ID do so for the same reason voter ID is required in many racially homogenous countries: it avoids even the appearance of impropriety or manipulability. If you look at how elections are conducted in say Taiwan, there are many rituals that are designed to provide visible evidence of how hard the election would be to tamper with. That builds confidence in the election system—irrespective of whether additional security is actually needed. (I have locks in my house even though I’ve never been robbed.)
> Majorities of whites (74%), blacks (69%) and other minorities (82%) say voters should be required to show photo identification before being allowed to vote. Voters under 40 support voter ID laws more than do older voters.
https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...