The Suppressive Impacts of Voter Identification Requirements

Abstract

Political observers argue that the United States is in a contemporary era of voter suppression. We study one mechanism that may limit voter participation, the requirement to show identification documents at the polls—voter ID policy. Voting rights advocates have raised concerns about disparate impacts of voter restrictions on racial minorities. However, past studies have reported conflicting results. Analyzing nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey across nine election years, we show that voter ID policies, and especially “strict photo ID policies,” have a suppressive effect on participation. Voter ID requirements can reduce the probability of self-reported voting by as much as four percentage points, enough to swing a national election. While we found suppressive effects of ID policies for all racial groups, we show that Latino citizens face disproportionately negative suppressive effects of strict ID policies.

Voting Intersections: Race, Class, and Participation in Presidential Elections in the United States 2008–2016

“…Considering this, the relatively high rates of voting among the lowest income Black people in the United States are even more striking. Moreover, these patterns exist despite protracted efforts by White political elites to disenfranchise these very voters via voter identification requirements, felon disenfranchisement, and other forms of voter suppression (Bentele and O’Brien 2013; Darrah-Okike et al 2020; Manza and Uggen 2006).…”

“…We further include state fixed effects to control for unobserved differences between the states, including policies and activities that may influence political participation. 3 For example, there is wide variation in the strictness of voter ID laws (Bentele and O’Brien 2013; Darrah-Okike et al 2020), and levels of campaign activity depend on how competitive races are in that state (Enos and Fowler 2018). We include an interaction term between election year and race because voter turnout across the three years varied systematically by race.…”

“…As citizenship and the state are deeply racialized, so too are citizen-state interactions and the bureaucratic structures that mediate them (H. Brown 2020). White and Black people historically have very different relationships to citizenship and the vote, given extensive efforts by White Americans to ensure racial domination through Black voter suppression (Behrens, Uggen, and Manza 2003;Bentele and O'Brien 2013;Budros 2013;Darrah-Okike, Rita, and Logan 2020;Haney-López 2014;Nakano-Glenn 2004;Pettit 2012). In response, Black communities and organizations have long mounted campaigns to gain voting rights, amplify voter turnout, and resist voter suppression (Bearman 2016;Payne 1995).…”

Separate Remains Unequal: Contemporary Segregation and Racial Disparities in School District Revenue

“…From 2001 to 2010 (a majority of the years of our sample), state legislatures enacted 99 disenfranchisement policies, such as voter ID requirements and the denial of voting rights to convicted felons, that affect Weathers, Sosina voter turnout (Blessett, 2015). For example, while voter ID requirements suppress voter turnout across racial groups, they have disproportionately negative suppressive effects among Latinx voters and are more likely to be implemented in states with greater shares of Black and Latinx voters (Darrah-Okike et al, 2020). The presence of voter ID requirements skews voting rates in favor of conservative and Republican voters (Hajnal et al, 2017), a bloc that historically has not supported progressive education funding.…”