Mission Accomplished: Study Shows GOP-Backed Voter ID Laws Work to Suppress Turnout

Highlighting the effectiveness of such laws to decrease voter turnout, a new study out of Wisconsin shows that somewhere between 16,000 and 23,000 people did not vote in the state’s 2016 November elections due to a newly-imposed restrictive voter ID law passed in the state by the Republican legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker.

“Gov. Walker and his co-conspirators ought to be ashamed of what they have done.”
—Analiese Eicher, One Wisconsin

According to the Urban Milwaukee:

Mayer explained to the New York Times that his study does not claim that the voter ID laws in Wisconsin actually swung the election in Donald Trump’s favor, but he would not rule it out either.

“The survey did not ask any questions about how people would have voted or about their party identification,” Mayer told the Times. “But it’s certainly possible that there were enough voters deterred that it flipped the election.”

What’s obvious, as many point out, is that discouraging voter turnout is not simply an unfortunate side effect of such law, but the essential reason they have been—and continue to be—pursued by Republican-controlled legislatures in the first place.