Voting rules affect election outcomes

Scholars and practitioners of politics are probably more familiar with how voting rules affect election outcomes than the average person. Since I am a member of this group, Ari Berman’s Rolling Stone article on The GOP War on Voting made me nauseous. The nickel version of the article is that Republicans in many states, under the guise of reducing voter fraud, are putting onerous demands on who can vote, despite the fact that voter fraud is nearly non-existent in the US. Not surprisingly, these demands don’t fall equitably along the political spectrum, but target likely Democrats. For example, in Texas a concealed weapons permit is acceptable ID for voting, but a student ID is not. FYI, gun owners are far more likely to vote Republican than college students.

What is perhaps more interesting than Republicans manipulating voting rules to increase their chances to win elections is the sales pitch: reducing vote fraud. Most people in the US I suspect have no idea how much of a problem it is and few are pro-fraud. Voter suppression, I suspect, doesn’t test as well in focus groups.