Renée Cross, Jim Granato and Mark P. Jones for the Monkey Cage:
We conducted surveys in Texas earlier this year to investigate these arguments. Our study found that virtually all eligible non-voters — that is, people who could have but didn’t vote — possessed a valid photo ID. But not many really understood the photo ID regulations….
The survey asked our non-voters to listen to three statements and tell us which one most accurately described Texas’s photo ID requirements for voting in November 2016. Only one in five picked the right statement: 21 percent in Harris County and 18 percent in CD-23.
Three out of five non-voters in both jurisdictions (58 percent and 60 percent) believed — wrongly — that all voters had to show a state-approved photo ID to vote in person. That wasn’t true. In fact, people with no photo ID could still vote as long as they signed an affidavit and showed one of several supporting documents, such as a bank statement, government check, paycheck, utility bill or voter registration certificate…..
Overall, Latinos were significantly less likely to understand the rules correctly than were other groups. In both places, only 15 percent of Latino non-voters understood the photo ID rule in contrast to 24 percent of Anglos and 28 percent of African Americans in Harris County. (CD-23 doesn’t have enough African American non-voters for a statistically valid sample.) Latinos also were significantly more likely to say the photo ID rules were more restrictive than they actually were.