Voter ID Laws: The Disenfranchisement of Minority Voters?

Pryor, Ben; Herrick, Rebekah; Davis, James A.

doi:10.1002/polq.12868

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Previous studies comparing turnout in states with and without voter ID laws have found either no effect (e.g., Mycoff et al, 2009;Erikson and Minnite, 2009;Highton, 2017;Pryor et al, 2019) or negative effects of up to 4 percentage points on overall participation or on the participation of Blacks and Hispanics (e.g., Alvarez et al, 2011;Government Accountability Office, 2014;Hajnal et al, 2017;Highton, 2017). 2 We improve on this literature in three critical ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018

Cantoni

Pons

2019

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We thank Catalist for providing the U.S. individual-level panel data and responding to our queries about them, and Robert Freeman for invaluable help setting up the data work. We gratefully acknowledge generous funding from the Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018

Cantoni

Pons

2019

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“…Government Accountability Office (2014) finds excess average turnout declines of up to 3.2 percentage points in two states that implemented strict photo ID laws between 2008 and 2012, compared to states that did not change their voter identification requirements, and larger drops among Blacks than among whites and Hispanics. Pryor et al (2019) and Hajnal et al (2017) use data going until 2014, and they respectively report negative turnout effects of strict ID laws across all races, and disproportionately large and negative effects on the participation of Blacks and Hispanics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strict Id Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018

Cantoni

Pons

2021

The Quarterly Journal of Economics

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U.S. states increasingly require identification to vote – an ostensive attempt to deter fraud that prompts complaints of selective disenfranchisement. Using a difference-in-differences design on a 1.6-billion-observations panel dataset, 2008–2018, we find that the laws have no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation. These results hold through a large number of specifications. Our most demanding specification controls for state, year, and voter fixed effects, along with state and voter time-varying controls. Based on this specification, we obtain point estimates of -0.1 percentage points for effects both on overall registration and turnout (with 95 percent confidence intervals of [-2.3; 2.1 pp] and [-3.0; 2.8 pp], respectively), and +1.4 pp for the effect on the turnout of nonwhite voters relative to whites (with a 95 percent confidence interval of [-0.5; 3.2 pp]). The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be attributed to voters’ reaction against the laws, measured by campaign contributions and self-reported political engagement. However, the likelihood that nonwhite voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities. Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud – actual or perceived. Overall, our findings suggest that efforts to improve elections may be better directed at other reforms.

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“…Between 1970 and 1975 alone the Department of Justice was involved in over 30 lawsuits regarding the disenfranchisement of this group (McDonald, 2004; Schroedel and Aslanian, 2015). In the wake of the 1975 extension, efforts to diminish the electoral power of Native Americans again mirrored those directed toward other minority groups, centering on vote dilution through districting, election and nomination schemes that prevented them from electing their candidates of choice (Wolfley, 1991; McDonald, 2004; Wang 2012; Pryor et al ., 2019).…”

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Battling the Hydra: the disparate impact of voter ID requirements in North Dakota

Barreto

Sánchez

Walker

2022

J. Race Ethnicity Politics

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Minority voters have experienced a renewed effort to curtail their access to the ballot box in recent years. Although a host of research has examined the impact of election changes on Black and Latino voters, scholars have dedicated much less attention to the rights of Native Americans, even as they face challenges to voting in states where they comprise a significant portion of the population. Many of these states are likewise increasingly important to national elections. Such laws may impact Native Americans when they intersect with the political geography of living on a reservation, and voting rights advocates have challenged them in places like MT, NV and ND. This paper empirically evaluates how such laws might uniquely impact Native American voters. We draw on North Dakota's voter identification law as a case study, but our analysis has wider implications, since residency is the primary means by which election administration uniquely impacts this group. Drawing on two rich survey datasets collected in 2015 and 2017, we offer descriptive evidence of the barriers individuals may encounter while trying to obtain an ID under North Dakota's law, and find that Native Americans are statistically less likely to have access to an ID than are whites. This gap is largely due to the requirement that an ID has a physical address and attendant difficulties in obtaining such an ID, given the remote nature of reservations. We bring needed attention to the impact of carefully crafted electoral rules on this often-overlooked group.

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Voter ID Laws: The Disenfranchisement of Minority Voters?

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018

Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018

Strict Id Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018

Battling the Hydra: the disparate impact of voter ID requirements in North Dakota

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