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		All Academic Inc.
		Political Research Online
		APSA 2008 Annual Meeting

Document Type:	application/pdf
Page count:	25
Word count:	1677
Text sample:
A Peek Inside: Using Provisional Ballots to Explore Photo Identification Laws and Voter Turnout at the Polls David Andersen PhD Candidate Department of Political Science Rutgers University Prepared for delivery at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association August 28‐31 2008 A Peek Inside: Using Provisional Ballots to Explore Photo Identification Laws and Voter Turnout at the Polls Provisional ballots can be a valuable tool in assessing how electoral rules such as Indiana’s new photo identification law impact voter turnout within the polls themselves. They provide a unique measurement of how many people encounter administrative difficulties within the polls forcing them to vote via alternative means. They also leave a record of how many of those provisional votes are subsequently verified after election day. This paper has 3 major aims: 1) make the case for how provisional ballots can move forward the investigation of photo identification requirements 2) generate hypothesis about what results might look like and 3) examine data from the 2006 election cycle. Crawford v. Marion County Election Board the recent Supreme Court case upholding Indiana’s controversial photo identification requirement rested upon a state legislature’s ability to regulate a perceived threat to the electoral system via any means that would not be facially discriminatory. The court relied upon the lack of evidence that photo identification requirements necessarily suppressed turnout among disadvantaged groups in its ruling while at the same time deciding that the law did not require the demonstration of actual voter fraud at the polls. In the presence of suspected voter fraud the ruling declared that the legislature had the right to impose rigid standards to protect against perceived threats so long as they were not clearly discriminatory. The burden of proof rests almost purely upon the opponents of photo identification to demonstrate the impact of the law is in fact disproportionately felt. Photo identification requirements have been studied only for the past 4 years as they have come into existence but other administrative procedures have been studied for far longer providing guidance to contemporary researchers on how to investigate the effect of new identification standards. As early as 1909 identification requirements at the poll (in this case simply matching a declared name with a pre‐registered address) were demonstrated to reduce turnout in New York City (Lapp 1909). Large declines in aggregate turnout were noted in this study the assumption being that this was primarily due to reductions in poll fraud. The simpler electoral procedures of the time permitted a straightforward interpretation of how turnout altered after voters were required to register ahead of
(3.33) (3.48) Evenly Split 121 26.55% 31.44% 4.89% (2.67) (3.22) (3.76) Mostly Urban 92 23.22% 33.77% 10.55% (2.64) (3.71) (4.05) Very Urban 60 32.92% 41.41% 8.49% (2.90) (3.80) (3.85) Total 543 22.82% 29.69% 6.86% (1.17) (1.51) (1.65) F Statistic 4.328 3.898 .497 (sig) (.002) (.004) (.738) 24