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The durable differential deterrent effects of strict photo identification laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2021

Justin Grimmer  and
Jesse Yoder Open the ORCID record for Jesse Yoder [Opens in a new window]
Justin Grimmer
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Jesse Yoder*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

An increasing number of states have adopted laws that require voters to show photo identification to vote. We show that the differential effect of the laws on turnout among those who lack ID persists even after the laws are repealed. We leverage administrative data from North Carolina and a photo ID law in effect for a primary, but not the subsequent general, election. Using exact matching and a difference-in-differences design, we show that for the 3 percent of voters who lack ID in North Carolina, the ID law caused a 0.7 percentage point turnout decrease in the 2016 primary election relative to those with ID. After the law was suspended, this effect persisted: those without ID were 2.6 percentage points less likely to turnout in the 2016 general election and 1.7 percentage points less likely to turnout in the 2018 general.

Keywords

Causal inferencevoter ID
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 453 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

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Supplementary material: Link

Grimmer and Yoder Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IWR4HE
Link
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Grimmer and Yoder supplementary material

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