Professors Begin Researching How Voter ID Played A Role In Turnout

Professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are researching the effect the state’s new voter ID laws had on turnout in this year’s presidential election.

Milwaukee city officials pointed to the laws as the reason 41,000 fewer people participated in this year’s presidential election compared to 2012.

Students at UW-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will be the first to take part in a survey about their participation in the 2016 election. In order to determine why there was a large drop in turnout, researchers need to find out people’s true reasons for not voting, Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at UW-Madison, said.

“Basically, at this point, claims about what happened by simply looking at the number of voters is just not based on the right information,” said Mayer, the lead researcher for the study.

He said they hope to be able to sort through all the reasons behind Wisconsin’s near 20-year low turnout.

“There are a lot of different things that might have been going on,” Mayer said. “The goal here is to understand what happened. To collect rigorous and empirical data about what exactly was going on.”

The second phase of the study will be a mail survey in January to people in Dane and Milwaukee counties who were registered to vote but didn’t, Mayer said.

The study was funded by a $44,000 grant from the Dane County Clerk’s Office and about $25,000 from UW-Madison Chancellor’s Office.

Mayer said the research team hopes to have final results by August.