I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.
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Notes -
Plenty of the underclass gets their license yanked because they can't stay sober or won't pay their tickets IMO; to the extent these people vote they're not partisan republicans. One of these days I'm going to write a lengthy post on my time among the underclass, but my recollections include an absolutely huge number of underclass males whose dui's and unwillingness to pay traffic fines lost them their licenses and who hated the Texas GOP but were inconsistent voters and didn't necessarily trust the democrats either. Suppressing these people from voting is probably a positive for the Texas GOP. So is preventing out of state students from declaring themselves Texas residents to vote in Texas elections.
Of course I don't support the franchise for students or the underclass anyways, but I'd imagine the median Texan adult who doesn't have a license doesn't have one because they lost it, not because they don't want one. This is a population with voting patterns that lean blue but are easy to suppress.
Does the median adult with a revoked license really vote? The things that correlate with a revoked license like being young, male and underclass also mean a very low voting propensity.
And AFAIK most voter ID rules would accept a license that was revoked as a still-valid document for identification purposes, even if not for driving ones.
Median is less important than marginal if you're trying to nudge elections. If there are 100k low propensity voters that theoretically would support my opponent, shifting the number who actually vote from 25k to 12.5k is still a win even though the median group member was staying home either way.
Whether or not this is decisive or who it actually favors in practice: v0v
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No, but when they do vote they don't vote R because petty criminals(which these people are) don't like republicans for obvious reasons. And they're not necessarily going to hold on to their licenses, or readily have access to them, because they're driving around without one anyways. Yes, you need an ID, but this is a group that's selected for being not very good at managing their lives and making long term plans, otherwise they'd be normal working class people. They also move a lot, and you can't get a license reflecting your new address(and it has to match) if it's suspended.
Texas has the lowest voter turnout rate in the country. Nobody really knows what a Texas with above-average or even average voter turnout would look like, politically, but best guess is it would be light blue- although that's not certain. It could be California, it could be North Dakota. The Texas GOP is basically guaranteed a trifecta under the current system, so they're loathe to allow it to change unless they know for a fact it would improve their odds(eg expanding rural early voting), and we don't have direct democracy without going through the state legislature first. Turning Texas blue hinges on raising voter turnout(probably selectively) and cutting off an avenue to do that is worth the political cost.
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