Crawford Got It Wrong: Partisan Signals, Racial Legacies, and Voter Confidence

• In Event: Discrimination, Racial Attitudes, and Public Opinion

Abstract

In Crawford v. Marion County (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive voter identification requirements are lawful on the grounds that, even if they do not prevent fraud, they can instill confidence in voting. However, this logic assumes different individuals hold similar opinions about restrictive reforms. In recent years, a growing scholarship has questioned this logic. In this study, I examine the legitimacy of the conventional wisdom, re-examine the partisan elite signaling model of electoral reforms, and construct a racial legacy model of electoral reforms.

The conventional wisdom model suggests increased voter restrictions decrease voter fraud beliefs and increase voter confidence; the partisan model argues partisan elites send divergent signals regarding the need and consequences of electoral reforms, and partisans in the public adopt those divergent positions; and the racial legacy model contends the historical and contemporary legacy of restrictive reforms being used to disenfranchise non-white voters colors the opinions of these laws differently for Black and white Americans, with the latter two models in direct conflict with the conventional wisdom model.

This study examines the legitimacy of these models via analyses of how state level changes to election access affect voter fraud beliefs and voter confidence in election outcomes. Results suggest restrictive reforms can decrease fraud beliefs and increase voter confidence among the general public, in line with the conventional wisdom. However, the strength and direction of this relationship differs drastically by partisanship and race, suggesting the effects found for the general public reflect a ‘balancing out’ effect among political and demographic subgroups, not a consensus effect among the American public. The results of this study have important implications for our understanding of how Americans view changes to election access, as well as the role of partisanship and race in opinions of voter fraud and voter confidence under different election access changes.

Author

• Joseph Alexander Coll, Texas Tech University