Abstract
Proponents of voter photographic identification (ID) laws in the United States have argued that such measures can increase overall voter turnout. The implications of this proposition contradict classic models of voting behavior, which state that voting costs and electoral participation are inversely related. The present article/research note explores this tension in the context of some fundamental economic concepts. Namely, after identifying characteristics of a voting “market” that might facilitate the outcome in question, a simple model of that market is developed and used to simulate changes in turnout due to changes in voter ID rules for a hypothetical polity. Counter to proponents’ claims, the findings suggest that voter ID laws tend to decrease turnout, even when most voters place positive value on stricter (i.e., fraud preventing) voting regulations. That being said, the model is intentionally simplistic, and it is put forward primarily as a tool for thinking critically about the relationship between voter ID laws and electoral participation. Because data that are suited to empirical analyses of this relationship are lacking, complementary techniques, such as modeling and simulation, are useful for testing unverified hypotheses about voter ID rules from the political discourse. The simple exercises in this research note begin to fill this gap, though they function most readily as points of departure for future research.
Highlights
Backers of regulations that limit access to regular ballots for American voters who lack certain types of photographic identification (ID) have floated the idea that such increases to the cost of voting might increase overall voter turnout (Fund, 2013; Kobach, 2012; Larocca & Klemanski, 2011; Lott, 2006; Milyo, 2007; von Spakovsky, 2006)
A NetLogo model is coded to allow users to control the values of five important parameters: (a) the number of voters from each of the three agent classes; (b) the number of polling stations located in the isotropic space; (c) the number of ID-providing institutions in the polity; (d) the weak cost increase, c, that applies to all voters under a voter ID rule (Table 1); and (e) the “Veblen multiplier,” v, that is multiplied by c and added to the value placed on voting by Veblen-type voters (Figure 1)
The aggressive move toward tighter voting regulations taking place in the United States, which reached a high point with respect to the number of voter ID laws enacted during the 2011 legislative session (Kobach, 2012), appears to be an uncapacitated source of both fuel and fire in the political discourse
Summary
Backers of regulations that limit access to regular ballots for American voters who lack certain types of photographic identification (ID) have floated the idea that such increases to the cost of voting might increase overall voter turnout (Fund, 2013; Kobach, 2012; Larocca & Klemanski, 2011; Lott, 2006; Milyo, 2007; von Spakovsky, 2006). The model is not proffered as a mirror of reality or a tool for predicting the precise turnout effects of voter ID laws in a complex polity It is merely a means for concretizing the foregoing thought experiment, and, in the process, exploring voting dynamics under a given (restrictive) set of assumptions, to challenge the claim that voter ID laws can positively affect aggregate electoral participation (e.g., Lott, 2006; von Spakovsky, 2006). In this sense, it serves as both an invitation for debate and a call for more scholarly research on the relationship between voter ID laws and turnout, for the purpose of building a sturdier knowledgebase on which to [not] take further legislative action toward such regulations
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