It is clear that voter ID has become an extremely
contentious political issue this cycle.
Numerous republican controlled state legislatures, such as Texas, South
Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Pennsylvania have enacted voter ID laws
which, to varying degrees, make it difficult for minority and urban voters to
vote. Traditionally these groups of
voters overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
To ignore the clear political implications of voter ID laws would be
folly considering the number of people who will decide this election. Democrats have argued that voter ID laws may
affect millions of voters come November 6, while Republicans argue that voting,
like so many other franchises, must require various forms of identification to
prevent fraud. This post will sift
through the political ramifications of the Voter ID debate in order to provide a
better context as to the stakes come this November’s election.
There are roughly four kinds of voter ID laws according
to the National Conference of State Legislatures
:
Strict Photo ID
laws: These laws require a voter to proffer a valid photo ID prior to
casting a traditional ballot.
If the
voter does not have the required photo ID then the voter must cast a
provisional ballot that may or may not get counted for numerous non topical
reasons.
South Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania
are the swing states with these kinds of restrictions.
Strict Non-Photo
ID: In these states failure to
provide the proper kind of ID will result in the voter having to cast a
provisional ballot. The distinction
between this and the prior category is that the ID does not necessarily have to
have a photo of the voter on the ID.
Virginia and Ohio have these kinds of Voter ID laws.
Photo-ID: These states have laws that require a voter
to have a photo-ID but gives the voter alternative methods to cast a regular
ballot should the voter fail to bring the proper ID. For example, in Idaho, failure to bring the
proper photo-ID should result in a pollster asking the voter if they want to
fill out an affidavit swearing to the proper identity of the voter, allowing
the voter to cast a regular ballot without leaving the polling location. Florida and Michigan have laws like this.
Non-Strict
Non-Photo ID:
These laws are the
most relaxed voter ID laws in terms of proving a resident’s vote eligibility.
These states do not require photo
identification to prove a voter’s eligibility and they also provide alternative
methods for voters to cast a regular ballot should the voter fail to bring
proper ID.
Numerous studies argue that potentially millions will be
affected by strict photo ID laws and strict non-photo ID laws.
The Brennan Center for Justice, which
normally publishes policy papers on voting rights, argues that more than half a
million otherwise eligible voters will not be able to access an ID issuing
office due to lack of transportation.
The Brennan Center went on to argue that more
than 10 million eligible voters live more than 10 miles from a valid ID-issuing
office that is open throughout the week.
These numbers from the Brennan Center paint a grim picture showing that
millions of Americans could be inconvenienced by new voter ID laws.
Although the Brennan Center and similar studies suggest
that maximally millions of voters can be inconvenienced by the bevy of new
voter ID laws, most likely the numbers overstate the claim.
For example, a study of the 2004 election
from the Election Assistance Commission found that a small number of people
were actually affected by voter ID laws.
People inside states with strict photo ID
laws were 2.9% less likely to vote with a stronger effect on those who were
less educated.
Considering these numbers the likely number
of people who will be affected by the new laws is likely to be small.
Even though the number of people affected by the new
voter ID laws will be small, that is not to say that the impact is not
significant.
In many of the battle
ground states this cycle, elections are likely to be won or lost by very narrow
margins.
For this assessment I relied on
Nate Silver’s excellent coverage and polling aggregation over at
Five Thirty Eight, now run
by the New York Times.
His state by
state breakdowns for battleground states makes it clear that the projected vote
share in all of the battle ground states is around 1%-3%.
Florida is currently projected at .9% vote
share difference, Ohio 3.2%, Virginia 2.2%, and Wisconsin just recently
breaking 5%.
Of course these numbers
have large margins of error and we are still approximately 7 weeks from the
election, and these numbers can change.
However
those slim margins of discrepancy between President Obama and Governor Romney
represent only thousands of votes that will make-up the difference between
winning those states electoral votes.
To put a finer point on it, assuming the projected vote
share can be mapped onto the 2008 election cycle’s turnout numbers, those vote
shares represent the following number of voters that a candidate could win by
in the selected battleground states:
Florida 76,083 voters, Ohio 184,748 voters, Virginia 82,567 voters, and
Wisconsin 149,854 voters. It is clear,
if the voter turnout is similar to 2008, that the number of voters that will
make up the difference in these battleground states is projected to be razor
thin. Thus, even if voter ID laws only
affect a very small minority of people, those effects can wreak havoc in battle
ground states where thousands of voters are likely to be the margin of victory
for either party’s presidential candidate.
Given the stakes of the 2012 election and the likelihood
that many battleground states are going to be won by thin margins, any efforts
to tamp down voter turnout for one party will likely have huge consequences on
November 6. Republican legislatures know
how likely the margin of victory will be in their states, and their voter ID
laws are one very useful tool to drive down democratic voter turnout. In
elections where only thousands of voters make up the margin of victory, any effort
that stops one political party’s voters from voting can have dramatic effects
on the overall outcome of an election.
It should be clear, at this point, that the voter ID laws, even with a
likely small effect on voters, can have a serious impact on the presidential
campaign this year.
