Weekend Reading: Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws

voter id

The claim by advocates of voter identification laws is that the requirement is put in place to prevent voter fraud. The question is whether it is too burdensome to mandate a state-issued photo ID. The underlying subtext is that Republican controlled state legislatures are putting the voter ID laws in place because it will disproportionately affect likely Democratic voters.

The non-partisan Government Accountability Office studied the effect of photo ID laws and produced a report: Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws (.pdf).

As part of its study, the GAO reviewed some existing studies. Five of these 10 studies found that ID requirements had no statistically significant effect on turnout; 4 studies found a decreases in turnout; and 1 found an increase in turnout that were statistically significant.

The GAO decided to run its own review of data and tried to find ways to compare the effect of voter turnout, controlling for issuing like hotly contested elections. The GAO used Kansas and Tennessee and benchmarked them to several other states that had not passed voter identification laws.

The GAO comes to the conclusion that voter turnout is reduced by 2-3 percent.

voter turnout effect

GAO found that turnout was reduced by larger amounts by age. Those between the ages of 18 and 23 than among registrants between the ages of 44 and 53 were less likely to vote. The turnout effect was 7.1% larger.

For those who had been registered less than 1 year the reduction was 5.2% greater than among registrants who had been registered 20 years or more.

For African-American registrants the reduction was 3.7% greater than among White, Asian-American, and Hispanic registrants.

Sources:

Other reports on the effects of Voter ID Requirements:

Author: Doug Cornelius

You can find out more about Doug on the About Doug page

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