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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWisconsin Strict ID Law Discouraged Voters, Study Finds
WASHINGTON Nearly 17,000 registered Wisconsin voters potentially more were kept from the polls in November by the states strict voter ID law, according to a new survey of nonvoters by two University of Wisconsin political scientists.
The survey, summarized on Monday on the universitys website, is certain to further roil an ongoing debate over whether Donald J. Trumps narrow victory in Wisconsin over Hillary Clinton was a result of efforts to depress Democratic turnout. Mr. Trump defeated Mrs. Clinton by 22,748 votes out of more than 2.9 million ballots cast. The November turnout in Wisconsin, 69.4 percent of eligible voters, was the lowest in a presidential election year since 2000.
The study summarized on Monday specifically does not make that claim, its principal author, Prof. Kenneth R. Mayer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. But neither did he rule it out.
The survey did not ask any questions about how people would have voted or about their party identification, he said. But its certainly possible that there were enough voters deterred that it flipped the election.
Wisconsins voter ID law, enacted in 2011 after Republicans took control of the legislature and the statehouse, requires citizens to show a drivers license, a passport, a naturalization certificate or one of several other fairly uncommon documents before casting a ballot. A federal court blunted the impact of the law in 2016, ordering the state to give a free ID to any voter who asked for one, but the states implementation of that order was criticized as ineffective.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/wisconsin-voters.html
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