I’ve started reading the new paper Rick H. links to a few posts below. This paper is going to be pored over by those interested in voting laws and policies. Here’s another paragraph from the paper:

[W]e believe that the public debate on nearly every aspect of election policy is clouded by incorrect assumptions about how the laws affect partisan election outcomes, and on this point we hope our essay is clarifying. The caustic rhetoric that suggests the partisan stakes for election administration reform are very high is detached
from empirical reality. Even very close elections are decided by margins larger than the magnitude of election reforms we examine in this paper. Further, the party that
benefits from changes is often unclear. In all but the absolute closest elections, modest electoral reforms cannot affect partisan outcomes.