The study by political scientists from Stanford and Tufts universities appears just as a heated debate is flaring again in Congress over the partisan and racial impact of recent voting laws. Photo by Stephen Maturen,Getty Images.

By Zachary Roth
Indiana Capital Chronicle

In recent years, U.S. politics has been consumed by partisan fights over states’ election policies.

But a new study by two political scientists is causing a stir by finding that state legislators’ changes to election laws — both those that tighten election rules in the name of integrity, and those that loosen rules to expand access — have almost no impact on which side wins.

“Contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout tend to have negligible effects on election outcomes,” write the authors, Justin Grimmer and Eitan Hersh, political scientists at Stanford University and Tufts University, respectively, in “How Election Rules Affect Who Wins,” which was published online as a working paper June 29.

These laws, the authors write, “have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship.”

That doesn’t mean these laws don’t matter. Many advocates, as well as the authors themselves, say there are plenty of reasons beyond partisanship to care about voting policy — not least the effect some can have on non-white voters.

“If we can take the temperature down on some of these issues and separate the partisan consequences from some of the other consequences, the public discussion would actually be a lot better,” Hersh said in a phone interview. “Right now, it seems like one of the reasons this stuff is toxic is because every minor thing, from having mail voting to having voter ID, is treated as some democracy-ending reform. And I think that’s quite dangerous.”

Indeed, Grimmer and Hersh’s conclusion, which is largely supported by other recent research, is at odds with the behavior of much of the political and advocacy worlds.

In recent years, the parties and outside groups have poured countless dollars and hours into the battles over voting, seeking to gain an electoral edge, stop their opponents from getting one, or fight voter suppression. Now, some are asking: What does the emerging consensus that these laws have minimal effects on election outcomes mean for that ongoing work?

Elections Bill In House

The study appears just as a heated debate is flaring again in Congress over the partisan and racial impact of recent voting laws.

On July 10, at a U.S. House Administration Committee field hearing in Atlanta, Republican lawmakers unveiled the American Confidence in Elections Act, new legislation that would tighten voting rules in numerous ways.

To make the case for the measure, the GOPers repeatedly criticized Democrats for predicting that Georgia’s 2021 election law, which imposed stricter rules on several types of voting, would suppress votes, especially among minorities. (“The left lied,” declared a GOP video on the issue that was shown at the hearing.)

Republicans noted the state’s turnout in fact went up last year — though Democrats countered that Black turnout had gone down relative to white turnout.

As the conventional wisdom has it, laws that restrict access tend to help Republicans, since those most likely to be blocked or deterred by stricter rules — often racial minorities, students, renters and low-income Americans — lean Democratic. And laws that make voting easier, the idea goes, tend to boost Democrats, since the people likely to be helped by them similarly lean Democratic.

Indeed, Republican-led states have lined up to pass restrictive new voting laws, while fighting Democratic efforts to pass expansive laws. Democrats have done the reverse — including raising hundreds of millions of dollars to file court challenges to the GOP’s measures. And at election time, both sides have mobilized vast armies of volunteers to hunt for fraud, or protect voting rights, at the polls.

Politicians have been quick to blame election rules for defeats. Hillary Clinton has said, with little evidence, that between 27,000 and 200,000 Wisconsin voters “were turned away from the polls” in the 2016 presidential election because of the state’s ID requirement. Former President Donald Trump has gone much further, frequently blaming his 2020 loss on loose voting rules that, he falsely claims, enable fraud.

Advocates and much of the media have likewise prioritized the issue, seeing a chance to hold powerful actors accountable, protect or expand access to the political process, or spotlight a set of urgent challenges to U.S. democracy.

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