Fox's Fraudulent Defense Of South Carolina's Voter ID Law
23.05.12
In assessing the
impact of the proposed photo identification requirements in section 5 of Act
R54, we turn first to the data that the state has provided concerning
registered voters within the state. The most recent voter registration data
available from the State Election Commission indicate that, as of October 1, 2011, there were a total of 2,701,843 registered voters in the state, of whom
69.6% were white and 30.4% were non-white. These data also show that of the
total number of registered voters in the state, 239,333 (or 8.9%) did not
possess DMV-issued photo identification (either a driver's license or a non-driver's photo ID card) that would satisfy the
requirements under Act R54. When disaggregated by race, the state's data
show that 8.4% of white registered voters lacked any form of DMV-issued ID, as
compared to 10.0% of non-white registered voters. In other words, according
to the state's data, which compare the available data in the state's voter
registration database with the available data in the state's DMV database,
minority registered voters were nearly 20% more likely to lack DMV-issued ID
than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised by Act
R54's new requirements.
Source: Media Matters for America