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

Tue Sep 26 07:26:49 PDT 2017

I would not count on the assumption that provisional ballots are a ready
option offered to voters, at least not in Mississippi. So far I have heard
many anecdotal stories about voters turned away because they are in the
wrong polling place or because they lack proper id, and thus not offered a
provisional ballot by default.
Part of the story is definitely poll worker training-related.

Thessalia Merivaki, PhD

Assistant Professor in American Politics

Political Science and Public Administration

Mississippi State University

189 Bowen Hall

662-325-4160

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 8:57 AM, Foley, Edward <foley.33 at osu.edu> wrote:

> I had similar questions/concerns to Derek’s when I read Rick’s report
> about this study and then looked at the linked documents.  I think it would
> be a major problem of poll worker training if 6% of registered nonvoters
> were prevented from casting a provisional ballot because they lacked proper
> ID.  Under HAVA, zero voters should be prevented from casting a provisional
> ballot for this reason.  I know that there was a federal court injunction
> pending in Wisconsin concerning the state’s voter ID law during the 2016
> election, and I haven’t gone back to look at its exact terms, but I don’t
> recall that injunction superseding the basic HAVA requirement that anyone
> who shows up at the polls believing themselves entitled to participate is
> supposed to receive a provisional ballot.  If anything, as I recall that
> injunction, it would have made it somewhat more likely that some
> provisional ballots cast because the voter lacked the state-required ID
> would have been entitled to be counted for federal constitutional reasons
> (if the validity of specific provisional ballots had been pressed in the
> federal-court litigation).
>
>
>
> Thus, insofar as the new study attempts to draw a distinction between
> voters *deterred* because of the new voter ID law and voter *prevented*
> from casting a ballot because of that law, I would suggested that the
> *deterred* category encompasses many (most?) of the voters that the study
> is describing as *prevented*.  Of course, this underscores the point that
> confusion over voter ID laws and their effect on the ability to cast a
> ballot is widespread, and very regrettably (at least in my view) causes
> voters to self-disenfranchise.   Given the as-applied challenge left open
> in *Crawford* and still unresolved by the Supreme Court (including the
> pending litigation in Wisconsin), no one who wants to vote (and believes
> themselves entitled but for an ID that they are unable to obtain despite
> reasonable efforts) should refrain from going to the polls in an effort to
> assert their rights and to participate, and no one who does go to the polls
> should leave without casting at least a provisional ballot if the poll
> workers refuse to provide a regular ballot.  If poll workers are not giving
> these voters the provisional ballots they demand, that is an electoral
> crisis of major proportions and needs much more attention.
>
>
>
> Ned
>
>
>
> [image: The Ohio State University]
> *Edward B. Foley *
> Director, *Election Law @ Moritz *
> Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Chair in Constitutional
> Law
>
> Moritz College of Law
> 614-292-4288
>
>
>
> *From:* Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu]
> *On Behalf Of *Derek Muller
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 26, 2017 9:05 AM
> *To:* Election Law
> *Subject:* [EL] "Careful New Study Finds at Least Thousands in Two
> Wisconsin Counties Didn’t Vote Because of Voter ID Requirements, Confusion
> Over Them"
>
>
>
> 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>
>
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-- 
Thessalia Merivaki, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Political Science and Public Administration
Mississippi State University
352-871-5260
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