How Much of a Difference Did New Voting Restrictions Make in Yesterday’s Close Races?

Cross­pos­ted at Bill­Moy­ers.com

The Repub­lican elect­oral sweep in yester­day’s elec­tions has put an end to spec­u­la­tion over whether new laws making it harder to vote in 21 states would help determ­ine control of the Senate this year. But while we can breathe a sigh of relief that the elect­oral outcomes won’t be mired in litig­a­tion, a quick look at the numbers shows that in several key races, the margin of victory came very close to the likely margin of disen­fran­chise­ment.

North Caro­lina

In the North Caro­lina Senate race, state house speaker Thom Tillis beat Senator Kay Hagen by a margin of 1.7 percent, or about 48,000 votes.

At the same time, North Caro­lin­a’s voters were, for the first time, voting under one of the harshest new elec­tion laws in the coun­try — a law that Tillis helped to craft. Among other changes, the law slashed seven early voting days, elim­in­ated same-day regis­tra­tion, and prohib­ited voting outside a voter’s home precinct — all forms of voting espe­cially popu­lar among African Amer­ic­ans. While it is too early to assess the impact of the law this year, the Elec­tion Protec­tion hotline and other voter protec­tion volun­teers repor­ted what appeared to be wide­spread prob­lems both with voter regis­tra­tions and with voters being told they were in the wrong precinct yester­day.

Some numbers from recent elec­tions suggest that the magnitude of the prob­lem may not be far from the margin of victory: In the last midterms in 2010, 200,000 voters cast ballots during the early voting days now cut, accord­ing to a recent court decision. In 2012, 700,000 voted during those days, includ­ing more than a quarter of all African-Amer­ic­ans who voted that year. In 2012, 100,000 North Carolini­ans, almost a one-third of whom were African-Amer­ican, voted using same-day regis­tra­tion, which was not avail­able this year. And 7,500 voters cast their ballots outside of their home precincts that year.

Kansas

In the Kansas governor’s race, Governor Sam Brown­back beat back chal­lenger Paul Davis by a margin of 2.8 percent, or less than 33,000 votes.

But Kansans faced two new voting restric­tions this year — a strict photo ID law that was put into effect right before the 2012 elec­tion, and a new docu­ment­ary proof of citizen­ship require­ment for voter regis­tra­tion.

What was the impact this year? We know from the Kansas secret­ary of state that more than 24,000 Kansans tried to register this year but their regis­tra­tions were held in “suspense” because they failed to present the docu­ment­ary proof of citizen­ship now required by state law. And while we do not yet have the data regard­ing the impact of the voter ID require­ment this year, a recent study by the inde­pend­ent Govern­ment Account­ab­il­ity Office found that Kansas’s voter ID law reduced turnout by approx­im­ately 2 percent in 2012. (GAO also found that Tenness­ee’s new law reduced turnout by up to 3 percent.) If the law’s effect was similar this year, it would mean that turnout was about 17,000 voters lower than it other­wise would have been. And keep in mind that the number of Amer­ic­ans that don’t have govern­ment-issued photo IDs that would be accep­ted under new laws is closer to 11 percent. In short, the margin of victory in Kansas looks peril­ously close to the margin of disen­fran­chise­ment.

Virginia

In Virginia, Senator Mark Warner eked out a victory over chal­lenger Ed Gillespie by only 0.6 percent of the vote, or just over 12,000 votes.

Like in Kansas, voters in Virginia faced a strict new photo ID require­ment this year. Accord­ing to the Virginia Board of Elec­tions, 198,000 “active Virginia voters” did not have accept­able ID this year. While there are no stud­ies yet on the impact on turnout in Virginia, Nate Silver estim­ates, based on academic stud­ies, that in general such laws reduce turnout by about 2.4 percent. If that were applied to Virginia this year, it would amount to a reduc­tion in turnout by more than 52,000 voters. That far exceeds the margin of victory here.

Flor­ida

The Flor­ida governor’s race was decided by only a 1.2 percent margin, with Governor Rick Scott narrowly beat­ing former Governor Charlie Crist by just under 72,000 votes.

Flor­ida has passed a host of new voting restric­tions over the past few years. Perhaps the most signi­fic­ant for this elec­tion was a decision by Scott and his clem­ency board to make it virtu­ally impossible for the more than 1.3 million Flor­idi­ans who were formerly convicted of crimes but have done their time and paid their debt to soci­ety to have their voting rights restored. Under Flor­id­a’s law, the harshest in the coun­try, one in three African-Amer­ican men is essen­tially perman­ently disen­fran­chised. Iron­ic­ally, Scott had rolled back rights that were expan­ded under Governor Crist, who had estab­lished a path for people with past convic­tions to more easily get their voting rights restored. Under that process, more than 150,000 citizens had their rights restored before Scott changed the rules. This is part of a pattern this year of candid­ates bene­fit­ing from voting restric­tions they helped to pass.

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It will likely be months before we have the data to assess the full impact of new voting restric­tions on yester­day’s elec­tions. But we already do know that their impact is far more than the number of hot races they could have turned.

It is little solace to the more than 600,000 registered voters in Texas who could not vote this year because they lack IDs the state will accept that the governor’s race was decided by more than 600,000 votes. For one thing, there are far more races — from state legis­lator to justice of the peace — that affect voters’ day-to-day lives and that could have been impacted by those lost votes. But more import­antly, those citizens — a number of whom were long-time voters who were turned away from the polls this year — were denied their basic right of citizen­ship, their abil­ity to hold their politi­cians account­able, and their abil­ity to join their friends and family to have a say over what happens in their communit­ies. The dignit­ary harm comes through loud and clear when you read their stor­ies.

Hope­fully those stor­ies — along with the big numbers — will help stem the recent tide of voting restric­tions. The integ­rity of our elec­tions is at stake.

(Photo: AP)