politics, voter fraud, etc.

[hudebnik]

I was just listening to an All Things Considered story on voter fraud. The reporter interviewed a (Republican) politician who has made fighting voter fraud a centerpiece of his campaigns, and asked "How do you respond to the criticism that voter-ID bills tend to depress voter turnout among African-Americans, a group that tends to vote Democratic?"

The reply was essentially "Almost everybody has a photo ID already , and for those few people who don't, the states that have passed voter-ID bills have also made free photo ID's available. The facts show that in the two states that already have such bills in place, minority turnout was not depressed; in fact, if you compare from election to election in those states, minority turnout was unusually high in the elections after the bill was passed, 2008 and 2010."

Wow: minority turnout was unusually high in those two states (one of which was Illinois, IIRC) in November 2008. I wonder why that might have been....

Comments

[la-peregrina.livejournal.com]

That doesn't explain 2010, but still.

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think minority voter turnout was higher across the country in 2010 than in most previous non-Presidential elections, perhaps because a lot of minority voters had registered for the first time in 2008. Don't quote me on that, though....