Political observers argue that the United States is in a contemporary era of voter suppression. We study one mechanism that may limit voter participation, the requirement to show identification documents at the polls—voter ID policy. Voting rights advocates have raised concerns about disparate impacts of voter restrictions on racial minorities. However, past studies have reported conflicting results. Analyzing nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey across nine election years, we show that voter ID policies, and especially “strict photo ID policies,” have a suppressive effect on participation. Voter ID requirements can reduce the probability of self-reported voting by as much as four percentage points, enough to swing a national election. While we found suppressive effects of ID policies for all racial groups, we show that Latino citizens face disproportionately negative suppressive effects of strict ID policies.

政治观察家认为，美国正处于压制选民的当代时代。我们研究了一种可能会限制选民参与的机制，即在投票中显示身份证明文件的要求-选民ID政策。投票权倡导者对选民限制对少数民族的不同影响表示关注。但是，过去的研究报告了相互矛盾的结果。分析来自九个选举年的《当前人口调查》中具有国家代表性的数据，我们发现，选民证件政策，尤其是“严格的照片证件政策”，会对参与产生抑制作用。选民身份要求可以将自我报告投票的可能性降低多达四个百分点，足以引发全国大选。虽然我们发现ID政策对所有种族都有抑制作用，