Yale Law's and the NY Times' Linda Greenhouse makes the searing distinction--which I further emphasize--between attempts at voter suppression then and attempts at voter suppression now:
[T]he ink was barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder when Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas announced that his state’s voter-ID law, blocked by a federal court last summer, "will take effect immediately."
It couldn't in 2012. It can in 2013, and beyond.
Last year Justice was legally empowered, in Texas and elsewhere, to intervene; now it's a legally beached mackerel in the moonlight. The Old Confederacy, as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania and other occupied outposts of pseudoconservative reactionaryism, can finally have their voter-suppression hoedown. Yee-haw.
In sum, we no longer can--or should--safely predict 2012's backlash as a 2014/16 event, because conditions have changed. Restrictions will soon apply that were barred from application before.
Does that mean another backlash is impossible? Of course not. The only absolute in physics and politics is that there isn't one--that, plus those proverbial actions compelling reactions. The one safe prediction, though, is that voter suppression is now far more likely to tangibly manifest itself in the next several election cycles. One could even go so far as to say that that's a fact, the denial of which portends an even worse electoral disaster.