It's not "all of a sudden", and I think it's the other way around. These laws (FL, TX, NC, others) started being proposed and enforced at a much greater rate around the time of
Shelby County in 2013. As you even pointed out before, FL was starting this crackdown in 2012. The "timing" is from those (mostly, but not exclusively) Democrats who don't like that rolls have been purged, and are trying to bring it up as an election issue. AFAIK, you could register in FL up until yesterday if, for whatever reason, you had been purged incorrectly. (EDIT: The date was Oct. 15) They advertise how to
check your status on the Dept of Licensing and Dept of Elections websites.
Why are you concerned about outside voter fraud from Russia (which is absurd on its face, but whatever) and not on
actual ballots/votes being fraudulently cast and counted? AFAIK, no Russian showed up at the ballot box (at least, in a place that required picture ID) and voted fraudulently. Multiple Americans did. AFAIK, no Russian manipulated the count of a ballot box. The
Democratic Party in PA did in 1994 and caused a federal judge to seat his opponent into the State Senate instead.
Interestingly, to head off any memes of "only 0.0000002214% of votes were fraudulent"...even the Washington Post delineates between "fraud" and "registration fraud" and doesn't count the latter as voting fraud. Maybe, partially, because it would add credence to the concept that we need stricter controls on voting? From their
2016 election recap:
Note, I'm not saying this is a (D) or (R) problem, or that one's worse than the other. I'm saying that, because there is abuse of the system, it must be controlled. With strict penalties for illegal activity. Can we at least agree on that?