[EL] "Careful New Study Finds at Least Thousands in Two Wisconsin Counties Didn’t Vote Because of Voter ID Requirements, Confusion Over Them"

[Derek Muller]

Is this data consistent with the actual election statistics in Wisconsin?
And to the extent there's a discrepancy, to what might we attribute it?


The Wisconsin Elections page <http://elections.wi.gov/node/4952> includes
plenty of data, including data about provisional ballots. For Dane &
Milwaukee Counties in 2016, they reported 754,094 ballots and 754,109
voters. Among those, they report 381 who cast a provisional ballot for lack
of identification and 94 who cast a provisional ballot for lack of driver's
license or state ID. Among those provisional ballots, 52 were counted.
(It's worth noting at least some subset of these are not because of
Wisconsin's voter identification law, but because of


That puts the number of individuals in these two counties who cast a
provisional ballot on Election Day for lack of identification at 423, or
0.05% of voters.


Now, I understand the study is doing more than that--it's including survey
results for individuals who say they didn't bother to show, ("Did not have
adequate photo ID"). But the weighted "main reason for not voting" in the
answers was "told at polling place that ID inadequate," 1.4% of
respondents; and among the "nominal reasons for not voting," weighted
responses, 2.9% of respondents. That's quite a gap from 0.05%.


I suppose that poll workers in Dane & Milwaukee Counties were not
adequately issuing provisional ballots to prospective voters who lacked the
proper ID, but I would be fairly surprised if that were the case. In my
limited experience as a poll worker on a few occasions (not in Wisconsin!),
provisional ballots were a ready option offered to voters, and voters
typically gladly took us up on the offer. A major gap between provisional
ballots and those who simply were turned away would be a fairly significant
training issue, I think, and merit investigation into how the counties are
training their poll workers.


And I suppose for every one person who showed up on Election Day, lacked
ID, and cast a provisional ballot, there were a dozen others who showed up
on Election Day, lacked ID, and simply walked out. That strikes me as a
pretty remarkable proposition--but, again, that's just a gut reaction. Or,
I suppose it could be the case that there's some systemic problem in
reporting provisional voting in Wisconsin.


Again, I understand that matters like voter confusion, mixed motives for
not showing at the polls, and many other complicating factors work into
this analysis, and a survey like this is an way to begin exploring these
issues. And, of course, I understand that there are many divergent views
about voter identification laws, which is also not really what I'm trying
to examine here. But I confess that I'm a bit worried when a survey
presents results like this that seem to be at odds with the provisional
voting data we have from Wisconsin.


Any thoughts or clarity would be helpful!


Best,


Derek


​
Derek T. Muller
Associate Professor of Law
Pepperdine University School of Law
24255 Pacific Coast Hwy
Malibu, CA 90263
+1 310-506-7058 <+13105067058>
SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/author=464341
Twitter: http://twitter.com/derektmuller


* <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94997>*

*Careful New Study Finds at Least Thousands in Two Wisconsin Counties
Didn’t Vote Because of Voter ID Requirements, Confusion Over Them
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94997>*

Posted on September 25, 2017 3:40 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94997>
 by *Rick Hasen* <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Careful new study
<https://elections.wisc.edu/news/voter-id-study/Voter-ID-Study-Release.pdf> led
by Ken Mayer:

*A survey of registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee Counties who did not
vote in the 2016 presidential election found that 11.2% of eligible
nonvoting registrants were deterred by the Wisconsin’s voter ID law. This
corresponds to 16,801 people in the two counties deterred from voting, and
could be as high as 23,252 based on the confidence interval around the
11.2% estimate, which is between 7.8% and 15.5%. The survey further found
that 6% of nonvoters were prevented from voting because they lacked ID or
cited ID as the main reason they did not vote, which corresponds to 9,001
people, and could be as high as 14,101 based on the confidence interval of
between 3.5% and 9.4%.*

*Roughly 80% of registrants who were deterred from voting by the ID law,
and 77% of those prevented from voting, cast ballots in the 2012 election.*

*Based on these estimates, if all of the affected registrants voted the
voter ID requirement reduced turnout in the two counties by 2.24 percentage
points under the main measure of effect, and by 1.2 percentage points under
a conservative measure. If they voted at 2012 rates, voter ID lowered
turnout by 0.9 to 1.8 percentage points.*



*The burdens of voter ID fell disproportionately on low-income and minority
populations.  Among low-income registrants (household income under
$25,000), 21.1% were deterred, compared to 7.2% for those over $25,000.
Among high-income registrants (over $100,000 household income), 2.7% were
deterred.*



*8.3% of white registrants were deterred, compared to 27.5% of African
Americans.*

*The study, conducted by Principal Investigator Kenneth R. Mayer, Professor
of Political Science and Affiliate Faculty of the Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs and UW Madison, with Ph.D. candidate Michael  G.
DeCrescenzo, was based on the statewide database of registered voters
(WisVote), which records whether a registrant cast a ballot in the November
presidential election.  The survey was administered by the UW Survey
Center, and funded by the Dane County Clerk’s Office.  The data are based
on a sample of 288 nonvoting registrants who were on the rolls on or before
election day, November 8, 2016.*

*The survey asked registrants about their reasons for not voting, the types
of ID they possess, interest in the election, confidence in the accuracy of
the vote count, and demographics. The survey did not ask voters about who
they would have voted for or their party identification.*

*The survey found considerable confusion about the law. Most of the people
who said they did not vote because they lacked ID actually possessed a
qualifying form of ID.  This confusion may be the result of a lack of
effective efforts educating eligible voters of the requirements of the law,
and it is consistent with other studies that show many otherwise eligible
voters are confused about ID laws.  There were no significant differences
between people who had seen information about the voter ID law and those
who had not.*

*“This study provides better data than previous efforts to measure the
effects of ID laws, which have largely been based on aggregate turnout,
matching registered voters to state driver’s license and ID databases, or
looking at the number of rejected provisional ballots cast by voters
without an ID” said PI Mayer.  “By asking nonvoters their reasons for not
voting, and about what forms of ID they actually possess, we get a better
understanding of how voter ID laws affect individuals, and what types of
people are most deterred by the laws.  The data show that poor and minority
populations are affected the most.”*

*“The main conclusion of the study is that thousands, and perhaps tens of
thousands, of otherwise eligible people were deterred from voting by the ID
law,” said Mayer. “The 11.2% figure is actually a lower bound since it does
not include people who don’t even register because they lack an ID.  And
while the total number affected in Milwaukee and Dane Counties is smaller
than the margin of victory in the 2016 presidential election, that is the
wrong measure. An eligible voter who cannot vote because of the ID law is
disenfranchised, and that in itself is a serious harm to the integrity to
the electoral process.”*

See also supporting information
<https://elections.wisc.edu/news/voter-id-study/Voter-ID-Study-Supporting-Info.pdf>
and
the FAQ
<https://elections.wisc.edu/news/voter-id-study/Voter-ID-Study-FAQ.pdf>.
 From the FAQ:

*You estimated the number of people in Milwaukee and Dane Counties who were
deterred from voting because of Voter ID. Do you know how many people
statewide were affected?*

*No. The sample was drawn from nonvoting registrants in Dane and Milwaukee
Counties. The estimate of the effect applies only to the total number of
registrants there who were deterred from voting because of Voter ID. The
11.2% figure cannot be directly extrapolated statewide, because we do not
know how people outside of Dane or Milwaukee Counties would have answered
the questions about their reasons for nonvoting or whether or not they
possess a qualifying form of photo ID. The statewide totals outside of Dane
and Milwaukee are certain to be greater than zero, but we cannot assume
that the effect was the same, 11.2%.*

Three brief points:

   1. These effects seem real and this careful study seems much sounder
   than the earlier Priorities study
   <http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/10/the_problem_with_the_civis_study_blaming_clinton_s_wisconsin_loss_on_a_voter.html>
finding
   up to 200,000 voters statewide affected by ID (a study Hillary Clinton
   relies
   <http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/jun/09/hillary-clinton/hillary-clintons-mostly-false-claim-photo-id-voter/>
upon
   in her new biography
   <http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2017/09/12/hillary-clinton-discusses-wisconsin-loss-herds-book-lands-wisconsin-filled-explanations-her-loss-her/657485001/>
   ).
   2. It is interesting how much of the deterrent effects from voter id
   laws comes from confusion and misinformation. That’s a feature, not a bug,
   and shows that the details of implementation
   <http://wisconsinlawreview.org/softening-voter-id-laws-through-litigation-is-it-enough/>matter
   as much as the law itself.
   3. While turnout effects (and electoral outcomes) interest a lot of
   folks, I continue to believe that this is not the central question about
   voter id and similar laws. The question goes to the dignity of each voter
   and asks why the state should be able to make it harder for people to vote
   for no good reason (and these laws don’t seem to stop any appreciable
   amount of fraud).

[image: hare]
<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D94997&title=Careful%20New%20Study%20Finds%20at%20Least%20Thousands%20in%20Two%20Wisconsin%20Counties%20Didn%E2%80%99t%20Vote%20Because%20of%20Voter%20ID%20Requirements%2C%20Confusion%20Over%20Them>
Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The
Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>, voter id
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=9>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20170926/2a0a0061/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2021 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20170926/2a0a0061/attachment.png>