One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

by Carol Anderson

The goal of all the GOP voter ID laws is to reduce significantly the demographic and political impact of a growing share of the American electorate, to diminish people’s ability to choose government representatives and the types of policies they support. Unfortunately, it’s working. In 2017 Newsweek reported that a study showed that “the turnout gaps between white and ethnic minority voters are far higher in states where people must show ID during or after voting.” There is a 4.9 percent gap between Latino and white voters in states that do not require an ID, but this “leaps to a 13.2 percent” difference in states like Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin. For African Americans, the gap “rises from 2.9 percent to 5.1 percent; among Asians, the gap increases from 6.5 percent to 11.5 percent.” In Wisconsin, 8.3 percent of white voters who were surveyed said they were “deterred” from voting in the 2016 election because of voter ID laws; that number more than tripled for African Americans (27.5 percent).