Voter ID may in fact reduce the GOP-targeted turnout

Greensboro News and Record editorial writer Doug Clark called Myers Park Pat McCrory out for making a pitch for voter ID that "is phony, contrived, calculated to arouse the gullible."

The barrage of false arguments made on McCrory's behalf include not only false comparisons between requiring a photo id to vote and for check cashing, but also includes an attempt to raise ACORN and its voter registration drives from the dead.

The election-day specter ACORN raises for the Republican right to whom this McCrory campaign is apparently pitched, is of higher turnout among voters hostile to the GOP, among them, black voters in general. The political calculus is clear. The latest Public Policy Polling results indicate that 68% of them favor incumbent Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue, while only 12% favor McCrory.

There is real if imperfect evidence that requiring photo IDs at the polling place depresses turnout among registered black voters. As as Sundeep Iyer recently explained at the Brennan Center for Justice:

By comparing Georgia’s turnout with turnout in other similar states that do not have voter ID requirements, it is possible to control for other factors that influence turnout. Of course, the comparison will never be perfect. But it can provide valuable context.

Consider nearby North Carolina, which does not yet have a voter ID requirement on the books (Governor Bev Perdue recently vetoed a proposed voter ID bill). In 2006, just 28.8% of registered black voters turned out; in 2010, turnout among black voters was 40.4%. Thus, relative to 2006 black turnout, North Carolina’s level of black turnout in 2010 represented a 40.2% increase. Compare those turnout figures with Georgia’s. In 2006, when there was no voter ID requirement, 42.9% of registered black voters turned out; in 2010, after the state’s restrictive ID requirement became law, turnout was 50.4%. So relative to its 2006 black turnout, Georgia’s level of black turnout in 2010 constituted just a 17.5% increase.

In other words, the black turnout jump in North Carolina, a state without voter ID laws, was more than twice the size of the jump in Georgia, a state with stringent voter ID laws. When appropriately contextualized, Georgia’s voter ID law no longer looks quite so harmless.

Voter fraud at the polling place, which the voter ID legislation is allegedly intended to prevent, "is virtually nonexistent."

The effective disenfranchisement of black voters in the South is apparently quite real.