Now available: “Mortality, Incarceration, and African American Disenfranchisement in the Contemporary United States”

David Cottrell, Michael C. Herron, Javier M. Rodriguez, Daniel A. Smith, “Mortality, Incarceration, and African American Disenfranchisement in the Contemporary United States,” American Politics Research (OnlineFirst: March 2018).

Available here

Looking forward to FSU Law Review special issue on Voting Rights. Here’s Michael Herron & my take on NC’s VIVA

RACE, SHELBY COUNTY, AND THE VOTER INFORMATION VERIFICATION ACT IN NORTH CAROLINA*

MICHAEL C. HERRON & DANIEL A. SMITH

ABSTRACT
Shortly after the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the State of North Carolina enacted an omnibus piece of election-reform legislation known as the Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA). Prior to Shelby, portions of North Carolina were covered jurisdictions per the VRA’s sections 4 and 5—meaning that they had to seek federal preclearance for changes to their election procedures—and this motivates our assessment of whether VIVA’s many alterations to North Carolina’s election procedures are race-neutral. We show that in presidential elections in North Carolina black early voters have cast their ballots disproportionately in the first week of early voting, which was eliminated by VIVA; that blacks disproportionately have registered to vote during early voting and in the immediate run-up to Election Day, something VIVA now prohibits; that registered voters in the state who lack two VIVA-acceptable forms of voter identification, driver’s licenses and non-operator identification cards, are disproportionately black; that VIVA’s identification dispensation for voters at least seventy years old disproportionately benefits white registered voters; and, that preregistered sixteen and seventeen year old voters in North Carolina, a category of registrants that VIVA prohibits, are disproportionately black. These results illustrate how VIVA will have a disparate effect on black voters in North Carolina.

Here’s a link to the pre-publication

Now in Print: “A Principle or a Strategy? Voter Identification Laws and Partisan Competition in the American States”

You can download it from Political Research Quarterly here.

William D. Hicks, Seth C. McKee, Mitchell D. Sellers, and Daniel A. Smith, “A Principle or a Strategy? Voter Identification Laws and Partisan Competition in the American States,” Political Research Quarterly, 2015: 18–33.

Abstract

We undertake a comprehensive examination of restrictive voter ID legislation in the American states from 2001 through 2012. With a dataset containing approximately one thousand introduced and nearly one hundred adopted voter ID laws, we evaluate the likelihood that a state legislature introduces a restrictive voter ID bill, as well as the likelihood that a state government adopts such a law. Voter ID laws have evolved from a valence issue into a partisan battle, where Republicans defend them as a safeguard against fraud while Democrats indict them as a mechanism of voter suppression. However, voter ID legislation is not uniform across the states; not all Republican-controlled legislatures have pushed for more restrictive voter ID laws. Instead, our findings show it is a combination of partisan control and the electoral context that drives enactment of such measures. While the prevalence of Republican lawmakers strongly and positively influences the adoption of voter ID laws in electorally competitive states, its effect is significantly weaker in electorally uncompetitive states. Republicans preside over an electoral coalition that is declining in size; where elections are competitive, the furtherance of restrictive voter ID laws is a means of maintaining Republican support while curtailing Democratic electoral gains.

Full Text (PDF)

References

Replication Data

Congestion at the Polls

Searching for Herron and Smith’s report for Advancement Project, Congestion at the Polls? It’s here: http://b.3cdn.net/advancement/f5d1203189ce2aabfc_14m6vzttt.pdf

Senate Judiciary Committee on Voting Rights

Honored to be mentioned by US Senator Bill Nelson in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in today’s hearing on Voting Rights. The research that he mentioned, which I coauthored with Michael Herron at Dartmouth College, is available here.