Submitted by smurfyjenkins t3_y14so4 in science
Reply to comment by paleale25 in In the US, many eligible voters have to not only register to vote, but re-register to vote. Automatic voter re-registration – which targets those already registered rather than all eligible nonregistrants – would on its own increase turnout in the US by 5.8 percentage points. by smurfyjenkins
Well, I listed two conditions, because barriers to participation come in both the forms of money and also time/knowledge. Voter ID laws consistently reduce voter participation, so you need to make voting easier to balance that out.
Also, it's worth pointing out that "free" IDs often aren't actually free -- you need to pay for things like birth certificates, you may need to take a day off work to go down to the social security office to get a social security card, etc.
And, further, a lot of ID laws are actually written in ways that are designed to specifically target minority communities (e.g., through the choice of what forms of ID to allow or disallow).
None of anything you have said actually impacts voter registration. Birth certificates and SSNs are confered at the earliest point of legalhood. Almost 18 yrs before anyone needs to vote.
Voter ID has no impact on turnouts and a majority of Americans 70%> support voter ID laws including minorities. White Democrats have the lowest support for IDs in the party.
>https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3446516
I think you're misunderstanding. Birth certificates and social security cards (not numbers) are commonly required to get the "free" IDs proposed in these laws. Many people don't have paper social security cards or birth certificates on file at home and need to go and get copies in order to provide evidence of their identity when requesting an ID. That costs time and money.
Saying that "Voter ID has no impact on turnouts" is false. Your source for that is not actually a study of impact on turnout -- they claim to find that only a small amount of voting occurs without ID, and thus assume the impact *must* be small. But it's worth noting that "small" here still means 0.1 - 0.31% -- more than enough to swing a close election, and potentially disenfranchising many thousands of voters.
There have been many studies on this, with some finding a negative effect of several percent. You can browse through some of them here: https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voter-identification
It's worth noting that the reason for enacting these laws is, in itself, the hope that it will favor Republicans. Voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and when it occurs, IDs are unlikely to prevent it. These laws are pushed by Republicans, and almost always in states where Republican control is threatened by large non-White populations. Exactly how effective it is is open for debate, but favoring Republicans is the point.
All americans are issued paper documents automatically at birth and ID in many states with voter laws count for anything including bank statements and utility bills.
Do not misrepresent the source. The 0.31% is the most extreme rendition of the people who have been shown to vote without IDs in states that require it.
Again, do not misrepresent your own links. You have deliberately ignored the studies also finding a positive result in turnout of the same several percentage points directly linked in the same paper. The consenus is a null effect.
Majority of voters back ID laws including democrats. Georgia was the most recent state in which the majority went to the polls and willingly voted for ID laws.
>All americans are issued paper documents automatically at birth and ID in many states with voter laws count for anything including bank statements and utility bills.
1: Yes, at birth. How many adults still have those things lying around? I know I've needed new copies before. This is an obvious financial barrier you're pretending doesn't exist because it suits you.
2: In many states, sure, but not all of them, you're just hand-waving things away based on what might happen in an ideal situation.
3: Regardless of any of this, there is absolutely no reason not to pair the ID requirement with automatic registration except malicious opposition to voting rights.
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>Do not misrepresent the source. The 0.31% is the most extreme rendition of the people who have been shown to vote without IDs in states that require it.
That's... exactly what I said. I said that it found rates between 0.1% and 0.31%. Hence 0.31% being the highest. It was you that misrepresented the studies by claiming they found no impact!
It's all a moot point anyway because voter fraud practically doesn't exist and the only extremely rare cases they find are Repubs who have ID but choose to try to cheat.
No real problem = no need to make new laws
Near totality of american adults have those documents. They are integral parts of being an adult, signing up for credit cards, tax payments, product purchases, renting, venue admissions etc.
That is not an ideal cooked up scenario, its the working law in majority of states. Majority of Americans use these methods on a daily basis.
Please dont read abstracts then come to your own conclusions. The studies including yours literally says so. The effect is null. Are you currently now arguing also against your own link? Or you will just keep picking and choosing paragraphs to ignore?
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