President Donald Trump’s SAVE Act, his voter ID bill that critics say could dramatically suppress voter turnout, could benefit Republicans electorally far more “than has previously been understood,” two academic researchers claimed Sunday after analyzing a comprehensive postelection survey.
“What we find, looking state by state, is that the bill may significantly advantage Republicans in a few key ones,” reads an op-ed written by researchers Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School, and Jacob Slaughter, a pre-doctoral fellow at the Tobin Center for Economic Policy, published in The Washington Post on Sunday.
The SAVE Act would require voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, presenting major hurdles to the 52% of voters who don’t possess a passport and the 11% who don’t have access to their birth certificate. The most affected voters are those with lower incomes, who disproportionately associate with the Democratic Party, a key factor in how the SAVE Act could end up securing two states for the GOP.
“In 13 of the 15 most competitive states across the past two presidential elections, the partisan gap is statistically indistinguishable from zero. The one clear exception is New Mexico,” the op-ed reads. “There, Democrats are an estimated 13 percentage points less likely than Republicans to hold qualifying registration documents.”
The researchers note that the partisan gap may only have a “modest” impact on this year’s midterm elections given that the SAVE Act wouldn’t affect those already registered to vote, but “over time, as more people would need to register after moving, changing their names or reaching voting age,” the bill, if signed into law, “could flip New Mexico to an electorate where Republicans have a 3.3-percentage-point advantage.”
“Nevada also shows a borderline-significant shift of 5.3 points in the same direction, which, all else being equal, would push it from battleground to comfortably Republican,” the op-ed reads.
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