There's a difference between mail voting and in-person early voting. NY allows absentee ballots by mail but is one of the states that still doesn't allow in-person early voting (or at least not yet - the NY Governor said recently that he would like the legislature to implement in-person early voting). That does not mean these states are trying to suppress the vote, and I don't see how you could make the argument that not having early voting - which didn't even exist until the mid-'90s - is a form of voter suppression.
"if you can't see the inherent racism in believing that a person is too dumb to understand how the internet works, how to fill out a government form, or to pass a driving test in order to obtain an ID solely because of the color of their skin, then, respectfully, I don't think we can even have an intellectually honest discussion on this specific topic."
You lost me completely here - where did I suggest that the inability to get an ID was due to a person being too stupid to do so, much less that it's a function of someone's skin color? If you enact a Voter ID law and then put up barriers to obtaining the required ID that make it difficult or impossible for some individuals to do so - such as by closing offices that issue them so they have to travel farther or restricting the business hours of these offices - then you are attempting to suppress the vote. Anyone in the group of people those barriers affect - which tend to be those who are poorer, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation - is a target of that suppression. We should be encouraging more citizens to vote, not trying to find ways to restrict them from doing so.
You want Voter ID? Fine, then make it simple to get the ID. The video you posted didn't honestly address that concept. They went to Harlem, a predominantly black area of NYC, to ask black people if they had difficulty getting an ID. It's not hard at all for ANYONE to get a legitimate ID in NY - even though it's not required in order to vote - but that's not necessarily the case in other states. So what point were they proving by interviewing these people?
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