From The Capital Times
By Dave Zweifel

The story was tucked away on an inside page of the New York Times last week, but it’s an important story that underscores the real reason so many Republicans want to require voters to produce IDs when they show up at the polling booth.

According to the story, research on voting patterns in states that require voter identification cards shows that they reduced turnout at the polls in the 2004 presidential election by about 3 percent and by two to three times as much for minorities.

The study was conducted for the federal Election Assistance Commission by scholars at Rutgers and Ohio State universities. Although the researchers emphasized that more study is needed, the results support the argument that minority voters are disproportionately affected by the requirements for an ID in order to vote.

Rutgers Professor Tim Vercellotti told the Times that in states where voters were required to sign their names or show an identifying document, blacks were 5.7 percent less likely to vote than in states where voters simply had to say their names. For Hispanics, the impact was closer to 10 percent. Those figures compared to a 2.7 percent combined rate for all races.

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