Voter ID Law Support Linked To Attitudes About African Americans, Study Finds

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July 20, 2012

By Gene Demby, Huffington Post

Graph of Political Party and Racial Resentment

A new study has found that support for voter ID laws, especially among those who lean Democratic, is linked to one’s feelings toward African Americans.

In the study, conducted by the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication, respondents were asked several questions, and their answers were used to create a spectrum of “racial resentment.” The more resentment a person conveyed, the more likely they were to support voter ID laws.

Voter ID laws require people to show some form of government identification before they can cast a ballot. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 32 states have some form of voter ID law, with varying degrees of strictness. Since Republicans won control of 20 state governments in the 2010 midterms, at least 11 states have pushed through voter ID laws. Supporters of the laws say that they help prevent voter fraud, in spite of the fact that studies have shown electoral fraud to be exceedingly rare.

Read more of the story here.

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