Can Voter Identification Laws Increase Electoral Participation in the United States? Probably Not—A Simple Model of the Voting Market

Proponents of voter photographic identification (ID) laws in theUnited States have argued that such measures can increase overall voter turnout. Theimplications of this proposition contradict classic models of voting behavior, whichstate that voting costs and electoral participation are inversely related. The presentarticle/research note explores this tension in the context of some fundamental economicconcepts. Namely, after identifying characteristics of a voting “market” that mightfacilitate the outcome in question, a simple model of that market is developed and usedto simulate changes in turnout due to changes in voter ID rules for a hypotheticalpolity. Counter to proponents’ claims, the findings suggest that voter ID laws tend todecrease turnout, even when most voters place positive value on stricter (i.e., fraudpreventing) voting regulations. That being said, the model is intentionally simplistic,and it is put forward primarily as a tool for thinking critically about the relationshipbetween voter ID laws and electoral participation. Because data that are suited toempirical analyses of this relationship are lacking, complementary techniques, such asmodeling and simulation, are useful for testing unverified hypotheses about voter IDrules from the political discourse. The simple exercises in this research note begin tofill this gap, though they function most readily as points of departure for futureresearch