The Elephant in the Room: How Voter Identification Laws Impact Turnout

• In Event: Poster Session: Representation and Electoral Systems and Poster Session: Political Organizations and Parties
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Representation and Electoral Systems

Abstract

Since 2002, state laws requiring more stringent identification to vote have been on the rise creating the debate of whether they cause voter disenfranchisement. Currently, there is a lack of literature focusing on the before and after impact of these laws in each state. Most of the existing literature focuses on the impact of these laws on voting levels for African American or other racial/ethnic groups, as opposed to the electorate as a whole. This research examines the deviation of states’ percent of turnout from the national average in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia for the presidential election years 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 focusing on the differences in elections before and after a stringent identification law is implemented. Organizing the states into five levels based on strictness, I find that voter identification laws increase voter turnout. Moreover, I find that states with the second strictest voter identification law leads to the highest increase in voter turnout. The results contradict the claim that voter identification laws create voter suppression or disenfranchisement.

Author

• Lindsey Brooke Hendren, University of South Carolina