edit: I'll also challenge you to find a policy around voting that is supported by a party that simultaneously hurts that party, just because they're principled.
Your "challenge" isn't difficult at all. Just look at every EU country where Christian democrats and other conservative parties neither trump up stories of voter fraud nor pursue policies to keep young people, women, urban dwellers or gays from voting, even though that "hurts" them (because their voters tend to be older, straight men in rural areas). This may be changing with the rise of far-right parties, but hasn't been much of an issue thus far [1].
The Brian Kemps of this world really are exceptionally malicious, and your attempts to normalize their behavior are completely misguided.
To take on this challenge - Isn’t that exactly the situation with the recent Supreme Court nominations? One party break the norms and refuse to vote because they want to wait until they can nominate someone. The other party could have done the same, but didn’t, because principles.
This is incorrect. The Republicans did it to Merrick Garland, and could, because they controlled enough Senate seats.
The Democrats would have done the same to Brett Kavanaugh, but couldn't, because they didn't control enough Senate seats. They instead tried numerous other tactics that I would not call "principled" to stop the nomination, and failed.
There were Democrats that voted for Gorsuch. The Democrats are absurdly naïvely playing a game of principles their opponents don't respect and don't know what “hardball” means.
Also, it just really isn't true, that democrats have been markedly more principled with respect to judicial nominations, at least in the past several decades. Its been an escalating war of attrition on both sides - neither unwilling or even reluctant to violate norms or make the process even more political.
Democrats basically pioneered the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees during the Bush Jr era, which was a pretty clear instance of ethically questionable, "innovative", partisan obstruction.
They were forced to relent when republicans gained enough seats in Bush's second term and threatened the "nuclear option" (the elimination of the filibuster).
Republicans made every effort to outdo the democrats during the Obama years with filibusters. Harry Reid then went nuclear to push through Obama nominees with simple majorities (removing the best tool democrats would have had to oppose Kavanaugh today). The capstone for the republicans of the Obama era was blocking Merrick Garland.
Now we have Kavanaugh. There's just no great way to interpret the democrats moves as principled here, even if you think Ford's allegations are credible (I do). The democrats needed to to obstruct and delay until the midterms, and the only tools to do it were delays, scandals and public pressure on the senate swing votes.
Gorsuch didn't tip the balance of the court, nor was his confirmation within spitting distance of the midterms. The stakes for both parties were much higher in the Kavanaugh battle.
The point is it is impossible to talk about politics purely at a meta level without evaluating the stances themselves. It is bad that you are not making a value judgement there. Start making some.
To respond to your edit, it is not a coincidence that the party supporting expanded voting rights is the party that's more inclusive in other respects as well.
There are times to discuss facts and times to discuss moral preferences.
There's something wrong when you can't discuss facts necessarily bringing in a moral side. And you seem reluctant to even acknowledge the facts to begin with.
I, of course, have my own opinions around voting and Democracy. I just chose not to share them in this venue, as it's beside the point.
> There are times to discuss facts and times to discuss moral preferences.
Not in politics. Facts about politics are useless devoid of moral context. "The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln" is both true and utterly meaningless.
This is different from, say, sports, where you can talk about facts without invoking a moral context. Politics is different. Very very different. Elections have enormous consequences. Lives are at stake.
> I just chose not to share them in this venue, as it's beside the point.
edit: I'll also challenge you to find a policy around voting that is supported by a party that simultaneously hurts that party, just because they're principled.