Republicans Say Voter ID Will Increase Voter Trust In Elections; Researchers Say Otherwise-Pennsylvania Capital Star |

Voters lined up at the polling station on election day. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Since the beginning of this year, the Republicans who control the state legislature have returned to a familiar topic to support their far-reaching efforts to rewrite the state's election laws-which will increase voters' confidence in the results of the election.

A bill now before the state House of Representatives would allow early voting, restrict the way voters return mailed votes, and modernize most of the state's 1937 election law.

These regulations also extend the time during which voters must show their identification, and Republicans often list it as the top priority for any election bill to be approved by the majority.

"Some of the things we did in the election plan were actually just to give voters greater confidence," State Representative Paul Skell (R-Franklin) said on the proposal at the September committee meeting.

Schemel says that stricter voter status laws are one of the things that can be done to build trust.

But at least three studies have shown that the voter ID law actually has no effect on the degree to which voters trust the election results.

A 2016 MIT study on voter ID and public opinion pointed out that voters generally support such laws regardless of which party they belong to, and believe that such laws can combat voter fraud and make elections more fair.

But voter ID laws can come in different forms and have varying degrees of strictness, and voters usually don’t know what their own state’s laws require.

Therefore, the study concluded, “As the data provided here show, attitudes towards voter fraud have deeper ideological or political roots and are not affected by the state’s electoral law system.”

Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of the study, told Capital Star that there are only two ways to make people more trusting in election results.

"This is the prescription: make sure they have a good experience when voting, and make sure their candidate wins," Stewart said. "Other than that, there is nothing you can do."

Stewart added that trust in elections is highly politicized. Voters get signals from people they think are politically convincing to decide whether they should believe the government's results.

Former President Donald Trump's efforts to legitimize his losses in 2020 with baseless allegations of voter fraud - often repeated or supported by low-level Republicans including Pennsylvania - clearly It clearly shows this.

But Stewart pointed out that the seeds of 2020 can be traced back to 2016, when Trump had raised the specter of fraud on the road to the final defeat of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Therefore, when Trump won, Republicans' election confidence was not as great as expected when their candidate won, he said.

So after 2016, “Republicans are just grumpy.” But now Trump’s failure, Stewart said, they are very angry.

This anger can be seen in the Republican-controlled state legislature pushing for changes in voting laws across the country. Whether in the 2022 governor’s campaign or in the lobby of the legislature, Republicans often list electoral reform as one of the top issues they hear from voters.

Republican candidate for governor in 2022 debates Pennsylvania's pass-by-mail vote law

The vote proved this. A poll conducted by Franklin and Marshall College in June found that three-fifths of Republican voters supported the abolition of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

The House Republican election bill is not that far away. Although it adds security measures for mailed ballots and reduces the options for voters to return ballots, the bill will retain Act 77, the 2019 law that authorizes universal mailed ballot access.

University of Kentucky law professor Joshua A. Douglas believes that regardless of Republican motives, Democrats and voting supporters should participate in the legislative process.

Despite opposition to the voter ID law, the Republican-controlled Kentucky State Assembly consulted Douglas in a legislative push in early 2020 to strengthen ID requirements.

Douglas talked about this experience in an upcoming law review article, saying that he participated because the political reality controlled by the Republican Party made voter status laws inevitable.

Some Republican politicians really believe that the voter ID law will make voting better. Others just want to win politically, Douglas told Capital Star.

In any case, he hopes that the country can enact a law that harms people as little as possible through deliberation and legislative procedures.

Douglas said: "If you work with people who support the photo ID requirement to make the law as gentle as possible, you can use it as a carrot and stick to increase your chances of voting."

The current bill drafted by the Republican Party before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives does solve some of the much-requested changes to the electoral law. It will give the counties up to five days before the election day to process and count mailed ballots. The bill also allows six days of early voting in Pennsylvania starting in 2025.

But the bill also includes a voter ID rule, although election experts describe it as mild.

According to current state law, voters must provide their driver's license number or social security number to register to vote, and must show their ID the first time they vote at a new polling station.

The Republican bill obliges voters to show their ID cards every time they vote. But it will allow every voter to use a scannable voter registration card, which can be used as an ID card, and allow voters without an ID card to sign an affidavit to vote.

A small number of Republicans even voted against the first version of the House Republican election bill in June, believing that the bill was too lenient, and one of them specifically mentioned the affidavit clause. Nevertheless, it passed the convention and was vetoed by Wolfe.

Wolfe, the Republicans tried again to negotiate electoral reforms, the county was caught in the middle

Kadida Kenner, the executive director of the New Pennsylvania Project, a non-profit organization modelled on Stacey Abrams' voter turnout efforts in Georgia, told Capital Stars, She does think it is necessary to change the state election law.

She believes that voters need time to correct the errors in the mailed ballots and expressed their desire for automatic voter registration.

But when it comes to voter status, she is unwilling to give the proposal any reason to "set up additional barriers for a single voter who has been voting since Roosevelt."

"We have a voter ID law. There is no evidence that any heinous fraud has occurred," Kenner said. "We don't need to change our position."

This is even more stringent than Georgia's Abrams adopted earlier this year, when she said it was important to expand the details of voter ID requirements. Democratic Governor Tom Wolf also told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he could support a bill with stricter ID requirements in the summer, but then withdrew it.

However, watching these superficial political changes did not change Kenner's thinking.

Republicans “do not trust our electoral system,” Kenner said, but she “does not believe that they have the ability to pass meaningful things and remove obstacles in front of people.”

For his part, Representative Seth Grove (R-York), the Republican election master of the House of Representatives, insisted that the bill would increase the trust of voters on the grounds that the voter identification law was highly supported in opinion polls.

As for the election misinformation, he and other Republicans shrugged.

"I can't help people believe everything on the Internet. There are a lot of bad accusations out there," Grove, chairman of the House State Committee, told Capital Stars this spring. "When members have problems, we try our best to solve these problems."

The final vote on the House of Representatives election bill is expected next week. Then it went to the Senate.

Senate State Government Committee Chairman Dave Algar (R-Schulykill) told Capital Star in a text message that he has not yet reviewed the legislation.

"The Grove representative has the same goals as me," Algar added.

The Senate has introduced its own streamlined bipartisan election bill, which will give counties three days of pre-canvassing for mailed ballots, postpone the deadline for applying for mailed ballots, and other changes.

Pennsylvania officials say the bipartisan election reform bill is a step towards "urgently needed relief."

Nevertheless, if the bill reaches Wolf's desk again, it may be rejected.

Wolfe spokesperson Elizabeth Rementer stated in an email that the bill “sets an unacceptable — and in some cases unconstitutional — barriers to voting in Pennsylvania, and Overturned many bipartisan improvements in Act No. 77 of 2019."

Instead, Wolf and House Democrats suggested that the House adopt a separate comprehensive election proposal by the House Minority Leader and Philadelphia Democrat Joanna McClinton.

Her proposal suggested that the counties be given up to 21 days to pre-post ballots and two weeks of early voting. Rementer said Wolf supports this proposal.

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Written by Stephen Caruso, Pennsylvania Capital Star December 8, 2021