When it comes to voter ID laws, Republicans care intensely about fraud while Democrats worry more about whether their own party will come out ahead, according to a provocative new academic study that challenges conventional assumptions about what motivates support for stricter voting laws.
Voting-rights activists have long accused GOP officeholders of racism or political expedience in fights over voting laws, but the study suggests that at least for average voters, Republicans’ support is a good-faith assessment of dangers they see in illegal voting.
Republicans respond to even small reports of voter fraud, seeing them as a reason to back stricter voting access, according to the research by John V. Kane, a professor at New York University, whose study was published in the latest Public Opinion Quarterly.
Democrats, meanwhile, generally support voter-ID but their support is less firm. If told the GOP would suffer from stricter voter-ID laws, Democrats become more supportive, Mr. Kane found.
“There’s different concerns in both camps. Republicans really do appear to be super-concerned about fraud and Democrats not so much. Democrats really appear to be concerned about the electoral implications, not so much fraud,” Mr. Kane told The Washington Times.
His findings were for voters at large, where overall support for voter ID is relatively high among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
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Dumbocrats can't win a fair fight!
ReplyDeleteWhy did they have to throw their own primary? They wanted the HildaBeast to win! Problem is that a lot of Bernie voters either stayed home or voted Trump as they didn't like her either! Bernie might have actually won!
Stricter voting access isn't quite the term I'd use.
ReplyDeleteHow about LAWFUL voting access?
That would mean cleaning up voter rolls, positive I.D. for every voter, foolproof ballots, and wholly transparent tallying.
The fraud is that anyone bothers to vote at all and thinks their vote matters.
ReplyDeleteIt's as lame as tithing your church paying your taxes and thinking that your point of view and payment into belief systems political or faithful makes you present and of any relevance. These are the notions that need to be torn down and vanquished .
3:30 I agree with you but the positive ID needs to be with proof of citizenship.
ReplyDelete