The Justice Department was right to invoke the Voting Rights Act and block South Carolina’s new law requiring voters to present photo identification. At least four additional states have put new photo identification requirements in place for the 2012 presidential elections — Kansas, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — and more than a dozen other states have recently considered such policies.
Our examination of the distribution of photo identification and voter turnout in recent elections suggests that these new photo identification laws will substantially reduce voter turnout.
Crucially, however, our analysis indicates that these reductions will be concentrated among racial minority groups. According to a 2011 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, only 75 percent of African-American adults possess state-issued photo identification, compared with 92 percent of white adults. Thus, these laws are likely to dilute the influence of African-Americans at the ballot box, and could reshape the electoral landscape in several key races.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the five states that enacted photo ID laws in time for the 2012 election are controlled by Republican state legislatures and governors, reflecting a distinct electoral strategy to demobilize minority voters.
Cathy J. Cohen
Jon C. Rogowski
Chicago, Dec. 28, 2011
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Cathy Cohen is the David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, co-principal Investigator on the Mobilization, Change and Political & Civic Engagement survey, and author of Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of the American Politics
Jon C. Rogowski is a Ph.D. candidate in the political science department at the University of Chicago.
