The Alabama Senate Race May Have Already Been Decided
- 6 years ago
The Alabama Senate Race May Have Already Been Decided
A state senator who had tried for over a decade to get the bill into law, told The Huntsville Times
that a photo ID law would undermine Alabama’s “black power structure.” In The Montgomery Advertiser, he said that the absence of an ID law “benefits black elected leaders.”
The bill’s sponsors were even caught on tape devising a plan to depress the turnout of
black voters — whom they called “aborigines” and “illiterates” who would ride “H.
Gambling is popular among black voters in Alabama, so they thought if it had remained on the ballot, black voters would show up to vote in droves.
The study controls for numerous factors that might otherwise affect an election: how much money was spent on the races; the state’s partisan makeup; changes in electoral laws like early voting
and day-of registration; and shifts in incentives to vote, like which party controls the state legislature.
For many of us, it might be easy to take a few hours off from work, drive to the nearest department of motor vehicles office, wait in line, take some tests, hand over $40
and leave with a driver’s license that we can use to vote.
After Alabama implemented its strict voter ID law, turnout in its most racially diverse counties declined
by almost 5 percentage points, which is even more than the drop in diverse counties in other states.
A state senator who had tried for over a decade to get the bill into law, told The Huntsville Times
that a photo ID law would undermine Alabama’s “black power structure.” In The Montgomery Advertiser, he said that the absence of an ID law “benefits black elected leaders.”
The bill’s sponsors were even caught on tape devising a plan to depress the turnout of
black voters — whom they called “aborigines” and “illiterates” who would ride “H.
Gambling is popular among black voters in Alabama, so they thought if it had remained on the ballot, black voters would show up to vote in droves.
The study controls for numerous factors that might otherwise affect an election: how much money was spent on the races; the state’s partisan makeup; changes in electoral laws like early voting
and day-of registration; and shifts in incentives to vote, like which party controls the state legislature.
For many of us, it might be easy to take a few hours off from work, drive to the nearest department of motor vehicles office, wait in line, take some tests, hand over $40
and leave with a driver’s license that we can use to vote.
After Alabama implemented its strict voter ID law, turnout in its most racially diverse counties declined
by almost 5 percentage points, which is even more than the drop in diverse counties in other states.