What we do know is that research has found that strict voting laws can backfire and make people more determined to cast a ballot despite the hurdles set in front of them. Consider what happened in North Dakota in 2018. That year, Native American tribal leaders and field organizers concerned about turnout following the passage of a stringent voter ID law responded by rushing to print new tribal IDs. As a result, during that year’s fall midterm, Native American counties recorded historic turnout numbers. Some reporting suggests that Georgia Democrats carried out a similarly energized ground game. In Spalding County, for example, activists moved “Souls to the Polls” events to Saturday after the county’s board of elections banned early voting on Sundays. Other statewide voting rights groups similarly amped up voter registration and efforts to educate Georgians about how the new law would affect their ability to cast a ballot.
In other words, it’s possible that depressed turnout was avoided in Georgia only because campaigns and voting-rights groups spent a ton of resources to help people navigate the restrictions. But if Georgia’s restrictive voting law hadn’t passed, those resources could have been used elsewhere.
Another important beat to remember is that high turnout, or whether people voted, doesn’t give us the full picture of how hard it was for them to vote — and that matters, too. Research shows that if a person is truly motivated to vote, they will almost always find a way. But it’s still not ideal if they have to jump through hoops to do it. And as The Washington Post reported, some voters in Georgia were unwilling — or scared — to cast an absentee ballot given how the new state law makes mail voting harder by enforcing stricter ID requirements and limiting the number of drop boxes that can be placed in a county. Ultimately, that fear of ballot rejection, alongside new drop box and ID requirements, may have deterred even more voters from casting their vote this year.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member