[EL] in-person voter fraud Washington 2004 follow up

Sun Jul 31 17:52:33 PDT 2011

I doubt very much  there is any impact that the voter ID has on voter
confidence and trust.

Let me repeat a posting from Jeffrey Milyo from last year on this issue.

As has been noted by others, the hypothesis that voter ID reduces
illegal voting is not so easy to test empirically, partly because
observed instances of illegal voting are so rare. One would need to
repeat the investigative work that Lori M. does for every state and over
several years, as well as controlling for variations in enforcement.
1. But it is possible to investigate whether voter ID laws affect trust
and confidence in government\elections; Ansolabehere and Persiiy sort of
do this in their Harvard Law Review article. However, for want of
appropriate data, they cannot examine the within state changes in public
opinion before and after voter ID laws are implemented, which is pretty
much the standard method for identifying treatment effects of state
laws. 
For those interested, here are some empirical results I literally just
prepared in response to this discussion; these are preliminary and
incomplete, yada-yada. The bottom line is that the answer to whether
state ID laws affect trust and confidence is *not much*; the details
follow:
I have collected survey data from national polls that ask questions on
trust and confidence in state government for the purpose of testing the
hypothesis that state campaign finance laws affect trust and confidence
(http://web.missouri.edu/~milyoj/files/CFR%20and%20trust%20in%20state%20government_v2.pdf);
in response to this discussion, I have repeated the analysis in that
working paper for the years 2000-2009, but also including indicators for
state ID laws and the implementation of provisional voting.
Here*s the results of that exercise:
The dependent variable is trust and confidence in one*s own state
government; it is measured on a 100 point scale (mean = 50, s.d. = 21
and #obs = 19,211), where *0* is low trust and *100* is high trust*
Overall, adding a voter ID requirement of any sort has a negligible
positive and statistically insignificant effect on trust and confidence.
However, not all voter ID laws are the same. If instead, I examine
differential effects of photo requirements and waivers to ID
requirements (i.e., the ability to cast a regular ballot after signing
an affidavit), then the results become: Adding an ID increases trust and
confidence by 3.5 points (p<.01), but adding a photo requirement or a
waiver reduces this to *zero** the effect of instituting both a photo ID
and a waiver actually reduces trust and confidence by about 3.5 points
(p<.01). That latter result is driven entirely by Michigan where a
long-standing but unenforced voter ID regulation was resuscitated by a
court decision.. (any ideas why the public response in MI should be so
different?).
This is just a quick and dirty analysis, but I can extend the analysis
thru 2010, should folks find it interesting.

David Schultz, Professor
Editor, Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE)
Hamline University
School of Business
570 Asbury Street
Suite 308
St. Paul, Minnesota 55104
651.523.2858 (voice)
651.523.3098 (fax)
http://davidschultz.efoliomn.com/
http://works.bepress.com/david_schultz/
http://schultzstake.blogspot.com/
>>> "Scarberry, Mark"  07/31/11 5:16 PM >>>
I'm sure this point has been discussed to death. But it seems to me that
one reasonable rationale for a voter id requirement is that it will
increase the confidence voters feel in the voting system. 

It's useful to educate people that, at least at this point, there does
not seem to be much voter impersonation fraud, other than perhaps in
absentee voting. But the education effort is not likely to succeed very
well. (Of course, it would also be useful if everyone were careful with
the facts, so that public fear of voter impersonation fraud is not
increased beyond whatever level is justified.)

It is a real and substantial good for our society when confidence in the
voting system is increased. Whether achieving that good is worth the
trouble caused to some voters by voter id laws is a fair question. 

Mark

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law
Malibu, CA 90263
(310) 506-4667

-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of
David A. Schultz
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2011 12:56 PM
To: rhasen at law.uci.edu
Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] in-person voter fraud Washington 2004 follow up

Rick:

Good question and you make my point.  I think studies on photo Id
claiming that deter voter fraud run the same problem as any other study
about criminal laws and claims that deter xyz.  It is impossible to
prove deterrence.

Conversely, I have yet to see a good study that really documents the
impact of voter ID laws on suppressing voting.  I think there are
research design issues, ecological fallacy problems, and perhaps a host
of other issues that make it difficult to ascertain  the real impact.

Having said that, American history is littered with many policies,
enacted with the belief they will achieve certain results, and they do
not.

David,
Have you applied the same examination of evidence to the question
whether voter identification laws actually deter much voting?  The best
study I've seen on the question indicates that the issue may not be
empirically resolvable, at least not yet.
Rick
David Schultz, Professor
Editor, Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE)
Hamline University
School of Business
570 Asbury Street
Suite 308
St. Paul, Minnesota 55104
651.523.2858 (voice)
651.523.3098 (fax)
http://davidschultz.efoliomn.com/
http://works.bepress.com/david_schultz/
http://schultzstake.blogspot.com/
>>> Rick Hasen  07/31/11 2:44 PM >>>

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