How Do Voter ID Laws Affect Minorities: Turnout and Court Rulings

Voter ID laws affect minorities more heavily than white voters at nearly every step: Black, Latino, and Native American citizens are significantly less likely to hold the specific identification these laws require, face steeper obstacles obtaining it, and in many states have been the express or documented target of the laws themselves. Whether those burdens translate into fewer votes actually cast is where researchers disagree, sometimes sharply.

The ID Gap

The starting point is possession. A 2022 report found that 21% of Black adults and 23% of Hispanic adults lacked a valid, accurate driver’s license, compared to 8% of white adults.¹ A 2024 University of Maryland survey put the figures at 18% for Black citizens and 15% for Hispanic citizens lacking any license at all, versus 5% of white citizens.² Earlier work from the 2012 American National Elections Study showed 27% of Black respondents and 17% of Hispanic respondents without any government-issued photo ID, compared to 8% of white respondents.³

Numbers from specific states track the same pattern. In North Dakota in 2018, 19% of eligible Native American voters lacked a qualifying ID, compared to 12% of non-Native voters.⁴ Litigation over Texas’s ID law produced findings that Black Texans were 305% more likely and Hispanic Texans 195% more likely than white voters to lack qualifying ID.⁵ In North Carolina, the state supreme court in December 2022 cited evidence that Black voters were roughly 39% less likely than white voters to possess the required ID.⁶

Why the Gap Exists

Getting an ID is not free even when the ID itself is. A certified birth certificate costs between $31 and $78 depending on the state, and a new driver’s license averages roughly $38.¹ For married women whose birth certificates list a maiden name, a marriage license adds another $8 to $20.⁷ An estimated 15 to 18 million U.S. adults lack access to documents proving their birth or citizenship at all. That gap has historical roots: legal segregation kept many Black Americans from the hospitals where official birth records would have been created, and older Native Americans born on reservations often have no official birth documentation.

Then there is the office itself. According to a Brennan Center analysis, more than 10 million eligible voters live more than 10 miles from an ID-issuing office that is open more than two days a week. Among them are 1.2 million eligible Black voters and 500,000 eligible Hispanic voters. In states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, part-time offices sit in rural areas with high concentrations of people of color and residents living in poverty.⁷

“Free voter ID” programs have not closed the gap. After courts found Texas’s original ID law discriminatory, the state created the Election Identification Certificate at no direct cost. Only 653 certificates were issued, roughly one for every 930 Texans estimated to lack voter ID, and many county election administrators showed little familiarity with the program.⁸

What the Research Says About Turnout

Whether these burdens actually change who votes is the harder question, and the academic literature does not speak with one voice.

Studies Finding Suppression

The most cited work is by Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi, and Lindsay Nielson, published in the Journal of Politics in 2017. Using validated voting data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, they concluded that strict ID laws have a “differentially negative impact on the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities” in both primaries and generals.⁹ Their companion county-level analysis found that turnout in majority-minority counties dropped 5.3 percentage points in states that enacted new strict photo ID laws between 2012 and 2016, compared to a 0.6-point decline elsewhere. In overwhelmingly minority counties, the drop reached 7.8 points.¹⁰

The Government Accountability Office, comparing Kansas and Tennessee to four states that did not tighten their laws, estimated turnout declined by 1.9 to 3.2 percentage points more in the states with new requirements, with a larger decline among Black registrants than among white, Asian American, or Hispanic registrants.¹¹

A 2017 Wisconsin study found that 11.2% of eligible nonvoting registrants in Dane and Milwaukee counties were deterred from voting by the state’s ID law in the 2016 presidential election. Black registrants were deterred at 27.5%, compared to 8.3% for white registrants, and the law reduced turnout in those counties by an estimated 1.2 to 2.2 percentage points.¹²

Studies Finding Little or No Effect

Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons, publishing in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2021, used 1.6 billion individual-level observations from 2008 to 2018 and found “no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.” Their estimate for nonwhite turnout relative to white turnout was slightly positive at +1.4 percentage points, with a confidence interval that included zero. They also found campaign contact with nonwhite voters rose by 4.7 percentage points in states with strict ID laws, suggesting mobilization may offset some of the burden.¹³

A 2025 study using synthetic difference-in-differences modeling on state-level data from 1984 to 2020 similarly found “no consistent effects on turnout” and an “aggregate impact” that is “minimal,” though it detected a 2.7 percentage-point decrease in presidential turnout for late-adopting states.¹⁴

Why the Studies Disagree

Justin Grimmer, Eitan Hersh, Marc Meredith, Jonathan Mummolo, and Clayton Nall published a 2018 critique arguing the Hajnal results were “a product of data inaccuracies.” They found the vote-validation procedures in the underlying survey data were inconsistent across states and years — the share of unmatched Hispanic respondents jumped from 15% in 2010 to 42% in 2014 — and that the model produced implausible state-level turnout estimates. When they corrected the errors, “one can recover positive, negative, or null estimates,” preventing “firm conclusions.”¹⁵¹⁶ Hajnal and colleagues defended the work and published additional analyses using county-level official turnout data that produced findings consistent with their original conclusions.¹⁰

A fair summary: individual-level panel studies tend to find small or negligible effects, while county-level analyses and localized studies tend to find larger ones. The disparity in ID possession is not in dispute. The disparity in ballots cast, once mobilization and other factors are accounted for, is.

Native American Voters Face a Different Problem

Photo ID debates usually assume everyone has a residential address. Many Native voters do not. Numerous reservations lack traditional street addresses recognized by the U.S. Postal Service, and residents rely on PO boxes. Strict ID laws that require a residential street address on the ID therefore fall unusually hard on Native voters.⁴

North Dakota illustrates the problem. After the state tightened its voter ID law in 2017, tribal members sued because many tribal IDs listed PO boxes and the state had never assigned residential addresses to their homes. A 2020 consent decree settled the litigation by requiring the state to let Native voters locate their residence on a map at the polls, to accept tribal IDs and tribally designated street addresses, and to coordinate visits to reservations to provide free state-issued photo IDs before elections.¹⁷

Some states have moved to accommodate tribal identification. Colorado expanded its list of valid IDs in 2025 to include Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service cards, without requiring a photograph. Wyoming codified that tribal IDs from federally recognized tribes are acceptable proof of citizenship for registration. Washington allows tribal ID cards for online voter registration.¹⁸ The proposed federal SAVE Act cuts the other direction, requiring expiration dates on tribal IDs used for voting, a feature many existing tribal identification documents do not have.¹⁹

Court Decisions That Shape the Rules

Crawford v. Marion County (2008)

The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s photo ID law in a 6–3 decision. Justice Stevens’s plurality applied a balancing test, weighing the state’s interests in deterring fraud and maintaining public confidence against the burden on voters, and concluded that burden was “limited” because Indiana offered free IDs. The record contained no evidence that in-person voter impersonation had ever occurred in Indiana.²⁰ Justices Souter and Ginsburg dissented, arguing the majority underestimated the burden on elderly and poor voters. Justice Breyer wrote separately that Indiana’s law was “significantly harsher” than comparable laws in other states.²¹

North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory (2016)

The Fourth Circuit struck down North Carolina’s omnibus election law, ruling that the legislature had targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.” Lawmakers had requested racial data on voting practices and then restricted the specific methods — early voting, same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and preregistration — that Black voters used at higher rates, and narrowed acceptable photo IDs to those more commonly held by white residents. The court rejected the state’s fraud-prevention rationale, noting North Carolina could not “identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud.” The Supreme Court declined to review the decision in 2017.²²

North Carolina passed a new voter ID law in 2018. Its state supreme court struck that law down in December 2022, finding it was enacted with “racially discriminatory intent.”⁶ Less than five months later, a newly composed court reversed course and upheld the law, adopting a heightened standard requiring challengers to prove discriminatory intent “beyond a reasonable doubt.”²³

Veasey v. Abbott

Texas’s Senate Bill 14 required voters to present one of seven forms of unexpired photo ID. Concealed handgun licenses qualified; student IDs and employee IDs did not. Experts estimated more than 600,000 registered voters lacked the required identification.²⁴ A federal district court found the law was passed with “intent to discriminate against minority voters” and constituted an “unconstitutional poll tax.” The Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed that the law had a “racially discriminatory impact.”⁵

Brnovich v. DNC (2021)

The Supreme Court reshaped the legal terrain for challenging voting restrictions under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Alito’s majority opinion established a set of “guideposts” for evaluating such claims, including whether the burden exceeds the “usual burdens of voting” and the size of any racial disparity.²⁵ Voting rights advocates say the decision has weakened Section 2 as a tool for challenging discriminatory voting laws. Justice Kagan wrote in dissent that the majority had “rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness.”²⁶

The Shelby County Aftermath

Many strict ID laws were enacted or implemented after the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder struck down the formula used to determine which states needed federal approval before changing their voting rules. Of the 15 states previously subject to that preclearance requirement, a third enacted photo ID laws in anticipation of or immediately following the ruling. Texas began enforcing a previously blocked ID law within hours of the decision. North Carolina enacted a strict photo ID requirement weeks later. Mississippi and Alabama implemented their own laws the following year.²⁷ In the decade after Shelby County, states enacted nearly 100 restrictive voting laws.²⁸

The direction is toward tightening. In the first months of 2026, Florida limited its list of acceptable IDs by removing debit cards, student IDs, and public assistance IDs. New Hampshire removed student IDs. Utah repealed the use of utility bills and bank statements. Nebraska shortened the window for voters to present ID after casting a provisional ballot from one week to three days.³⁰

At the federal level, the SAVE America Act passed the House in February 2026 and would require documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote nationwide. It would exclude student IDs and require expiration dates on tribal IDs. The Brennan Center estimates more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to the citizenship documents the bill would require. As of early 2026, the bill faces a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.³¹

The Fraud These Laws Are Meant to Stop

Voter ID laws are justified as a defense against in-person voter impersonation, and courts and researchers have repeatedly found that type of fraud is extraordinarily rare. A 2014 study identified 31 credible instances of impersonation out of more than one billion ballots cast over a 14-year period. Academic reviews place the incident rate between 0.0003% and 0.0025%.³²

The absence surfaces in the case law. The Fifth Circuit counted only two convictions for in-person impersonation out of 20 million votes cast in the decade before Texas passed its strict ID law. The Fourth Circuit found North Carolina could not identify a single individual ever charged with the crime. The Supreme Court’s own record in Crawford “contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.”³² The GAO concluded that estimating the incidence of in-person fraud is difficult because “no single source or database” captures such cases, but its review found “few instances.”³³

Proponents of ID laws argue that even rare fraud undermines public confidence and that identification is a reasonable safeguard. Opponents counter that the laws create documented, race-correlated barriers to a right that hundreds of thousands of eligible voters otherwise would exercise. The ID gap between white voters and voters of color is the fact both sides work from; what they disagree about is what that gap costs, and whether the problem the laws address is large enough to justify it.

1
MAP Research. The ID Divide
2
Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. Voter ID 2023 Survey Key Results
3
Project Vote. Americans With Photo ID Research Memo
4
Brennan Center for Justice. How Voter Suppression Laws Target Native Americans
5
Harvard Law Review. Veasey v. Abbott
6
State Court Report. Voter ID Law Struck Down by North Carolina Supreme Court
7
Brennan Center for Justice. The Challenge of Obtaining Voter Identification
8
Wisconsin Law Review. Softening Voter ID Laws Through Litigation: Is It Enough?
9
The Journal of Politics. Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes
10
University of Wisconsin ESRA. Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes – Section: County-Level Analysis
11
Government Accountability Office. Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws
12
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Voter ID Study Release
13
National Bureau of Economic Research. Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence From a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008–2018
14
SAGE Journals. Strict Voter ID Laws and Turnout
15
Stanford University. Comment on Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes
16
Princeton University. Obstacles to Estimating Voter ID Laws’ Effect on Turnout
17
Native American Rights Fund. North Dakota Voter ID
18
National Conference of State Legislatures. Voting for All Americans: Native Americans
19
Brennan Center for Justice. New SAVE Act Bills Would Still Block Millions of Americans From Voting
20
Cornell Law Institute. Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
21
Justia. Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
22
Brennan Center for Justice. North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory
23
State Court Report. North Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Voter ID Law 5 Months After Striking It Down
24
Brennan Center for Justice. Texas NAACP v. Steen
25
Supreme Court of the United States. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
26
Harvard Law Review. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
27
Voting Rights Lab. 10 Years Since Shelby v. Holder
28
Brennan Center for Justice. Voter ID
30
Brennan Center for Justice. State Voting Laws Roundup: May 2026
31
SCOTUSblog. The Supreme Court and Voting Identification
32
Brennan Center for Justice. Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth
33
Government Accountability Office. Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws