* Notwithstanding assumptions taken for granted on both sides in the long battle over voter ID laws, a new study finds that, to quote the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, such laws “have a negligible effect on elections and have not swayed election results for either major party.” That result is broadly consistent with an earlier study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics that found no major impacts on registration or turnout based on race, age, gender, or party affiliation. The new study, which directly examines the partisan outcome of contests, does find “the first voter ID laws produced a Democratic advantage that weakened over time” — not the Republican surge many predicted. Both studies find signs that partisan mobilization in response to the laws may have been a bigger factor than the laws themselves.

* Although no less a personage than President Joe Biden demagogically attacked a middle‐​of‐​the‐​road set of voting reforms in Georgia as “Jim Crow on steroids,” a University of Georgia post‐​election survey has now found no racial difference among Georgia voters in satisfaction with the voting experience, and high satisfaction overall.