Ken Berwitz
Voter fraud is, for all intents and purposes, practicallynonexistent. Ok, we start with a complete BS premise. In the absence of Voter ID, it is virtually impossible to check whether fraud has taken place…which, of course, makes it an open field for anyone or any group to perpetrate it. The best available research on the topic, by Loyola Law Schoolprofessor Justin Levitt, found only 31 credible incidents of voterimpersonation in an investigation of over 1 billion votes cast. Yeah, sure. Reread what I just wrote, Christopher…and Justin.
But that hasn\’t dampened Republican efforts to pass a spateof strict voter ID laws since 2008. And it hasn\’t hurt the public\’s overallenthusiasm for those laws, either. Nope, it hasn\’t. Funny how some people think voters should have to show they are who they say they are before voting. Like they have to in every other country in the world. To the Christopher Ingrahams of the world this is strange and devious. To the rest of us it is common sense.
But the results of a new working paper from politicalscientists at University of California, San Diego suggest folks may want toconsider. The researchers analyzed turnout in recent elections — between 2008and 2012 — in states that did and did not implement the strictest form ofvoter ID laws. They found that these laws consistently and significantlydecreased turnout not just among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups, likeblacks and Hispanics, but among Republican voters too. Gee, y\’mean requiring people to show they are eligible to vote can prevent illegal voting from both parties, not just one? That just breaks me up.
That\’s what makes the current research so important. Thestudy\’s authors controlled for a wide variety of factors known to affect voterturnout — age, education, income, marital status, etc.
They also controlled for other state laws that affectparticipation, like early voting. And they considered less-tangible aspectsthat influence turnout, like the competitiveness of races and whether theelection was held during a presidential contest year or an off-year.
After controlling for all these factors, they found”substantial drops in turnout for minorities under strict voter IDlaws.” Their analysis suggests that turnout for Latino voters wassuppressed by 10.8 points in states with strict photo ID laws, compared tostates without them. For multiracial Americans, the drop was 12.8 points. Uh….why did this happen, other than that people in those groups were voting illegally, and Voter ID laws caused them not to show up at the polls? It certainly isn\’t that Voter IDs are hard to come by for legal voters: they are easily accessible and free in virtually every state.
The laws also increased the participation gap between whitesand non-whites. “For Latinos in the general election, the predicted gapfrom whites doubled from 5.3 points in states without strict photo ID laws to11.9 in states with strict photo ID laws,” the study found. For blackvoters in the primaries, the strict photo ID laws caused the gap with whitevoters to almost double to 8.5 points. Has it ever occurred to you, Chris, that these findings show there is a greater level of illegal voting among these groups – which, not incidentally, are hugely Democrat constituencies? I guess not. That\’s much too analytical for you. Better to just pretend there is no such thing as voter fraud.
