The 2016 election is almost here. This means folks will be talking about voter ID laws. Some folks like to dismiss voter ID propositions as nonsense. However, a new poll suggests the number of people who support voter ID laws is larger than you would expect.
The poll, contacted by Gallup on August 22, reported that nearly eighty percent of respondents supported state laws that required picture IDs at polling locations.
Only nineteen percent of people opposed such laws. There were other interesting findings in the poll. About eighty percent of people also supported early voting practices to increase voter turnout. Also, about sixty percent of respondents supported automatic voter registration.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Republican respondents overwhelmingly supported voter ID laws. Republicans also generally supported early voting practices. However, members of political parties were almost evenly split on the issue of automatic registration. Gallup studied the polling numbers in many different ways.
For example, they discovered the races were evenly split on many of the topics. They discovered that Republicans were more concerned with voter fraud, and Democrats were more concerned with voter suppression. They concluded the poll by reporting many judges have been swayed by the argument that voter ID laws lead to voter suppression, but the report did mention there were certainly instances of convicted voter fraud.
It remains to be seen if the public will feel the few dozen accounts of voter fraud warrant voter ID laws. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
