Voting in this country

I try to keep political commentary to a minimum on this blog, because there are plenty of blogs out there dedicated to that kind of discourse. I do have one observation to make, though. When considering modern politics in the US, what does it say about a political party that an apparently legitimate (that is, recognized, orchestrated, and encouraged at the national level by party leaders) part of their strategy is to suppress voter turnout? It's one thing to try to pander to -- err, energize your base to make sure that they come to the polls in droves. It's quite different to deliberately try to keep people that you think might be voting for the other side away from the polls. You know, by tactics like phone bank jamming sanctioned by the White House, blanket scrubbing of voter rolls in ways virtually guaranteed to bar legitimate voters, shredding voter registration cards of people from one party, challenging the legitimacy of every ballot cast in certain precincts to deliberately slow down the vote in areas dominated by the other party, etc.