Diffusion Mechanisms of State Voter Identification in a Post-Shelby Environment

• In Event: Laboratories of Democracy: Advances in Policy Diffusion Research

Abstract

Despite voter identification becoming a partisan issue over the last 20 years, partisan adoption effects only seem occur in specific circumstances where GOP controlled states anticipate electoral vulnerability (Hicks et al. 2015), even with growing claims of the laws’ suppressing effects on the electorate (Hajnal et al. 2017). Previous work on the matter was performed prior to 2013, and thus cannot capture the potential suppressing effects of the Shelby v Holder decision (Feder and Miller 2020, Gibson 2020, Walker et al. 2018). I use voter identification laws in the states from 2002 to 2018 to test both the mechanisms by which this policy diffuses as well as any potential changes following the Shelby case. I hypothesize diffusion to occur along one of two lines: partisan-based learning or morality-based emulation. The former would have GOP controlled states adopting policies if they observe electoral success in peer states that had previously adopted voter identification laws, while the latter would have states following a more simple adoption pattern based on shared, partisan norms. A post-Shelby indicator will be used to capture the hypothesized increase in leaning-based adoptions after the Voting Rights Act provisions are weakened. I also make slight modeling improvements on older studies by using a directed dyadic event history model.

Author

• Isaac Pollert, University of Illinois at chicago