Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “When Georgia became one of the first states in the nation to demand a photo ID at the ballot box, both sides served up dire predictions. Opponents labeled it a Jim Crow-era tactic that would suppress the minority vote. Supporters insisted it was needed to combat fraud that imperiled the integrity of the elections process. But both claims were overblown, according to a review of by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of statewide voting patterns in the five years since the law took effect….Still, the law has had real and measurable effect for some voters: Since November 2008, the ballots of 1,586 Georgians didn’t count because of the law. (They arrived at the polls without a photo ID, cast provisional ballots, and did not return later with the required ID.) Overall, 13.6 million votes were cast in the state during the same period.”
Those figures of course do not include people who did not show up at the polls because they lacked i.d. and knew they would not have the i.d. available later to have their vote counted.
Still, this sounds consistent with what I’ve been saying about these laws.
And importantly, there remains no evidence that voter id laws boost turnout. As Justin explains:
Some academics caution against drawing conclusions about the impact of voter ID from so little data.
Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called 2008 a “tidal wave” election for minority voters because of Obama. It will take time, he said, before the effect of voter ID can be parsed out from other factors that drive turnout.
“We need a big enough data set that it will squeeze out that extra noise,” Levitt said. “And that is going to take some time.”