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Research Update
A research report by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and
Training Institute on
The Driver License Status of the Voting Age Population in Wisconsin
has received renewed attention as public officials and the
courts assess disparate impacts of state and local laws requiring
photo IDs as a condition for voting and the Supreme Court examines challenges
to the photo
ID voter law in Indiana.
The Employment and Training
Institute study was the first research available that measured
driver's license disparities by race and
age. The
ETI was able to measure possession of driver's licenses for subpopulations
in Wisconsin, having reviewed the state license files for
employment-related research, and particularly for lack of licenses among
working age
African Americans and Latinos in Milwaukee County.
The ETI research
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The ETI report on
The
Driver License Status of the Voting Age Population in Wisconsin issued
in June 2005 examined the following:
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ETI Research Used in Souter's Dissent in Supreme Court Decision on Indiana Voter ID Law
In the Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Indiana
Democratic Party v. Todd Rokita, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court
on April 28, 2008, Justice David Souter wrote, "The upshot is this. Tens
of thousands of voting-age residents lack the necessary photo
identification. A large proportion of them are likely to be in bad shape
economically...." Souter cited the ETI research in Wisconsin, noting
"Studies in other States suggest that the burdens of an ID requirement may
also fall disproportionately upon racial minorities" -- with
Souter including the
"June
2005 study by the Employment and Training Institute at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which found that while 17% of voting age whites
lacked a valid driver's license, 55% of black males and 49% of black
females were unlicensed, and 46% of Latino males and 59% of Latino females
were similarly unlicensed."
[Souter
dissenting opinion at page 13].
The
petitioners' brief to the Supreme Court had
cited the Employment and Training Institute research on percentages of
elderly
in
Wisconsin without a driver's license or photo ID (23%) and the low
percentages
of
African American and Hispanic adults in Milwaukee with a driver's
license (47% and 43%, respectively) to challenge the 7th Circuit
Court ruling. The attorneys argue, "The court of
appeals also erred in concluding that the challenged law has little effect
on the electorate....This is not just a problem that is limited to the
homeless and displaced. Citizens with lower incomes are less likely to
possess photo identification, and minority populations disproportionately
lack identification." (pp. 39-40)
In his
majority opinion for the 7th Circuit Court, Judge
Richard Posner had written that
it is "exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's America without a
photo ID ... and as a consequence, the majority of adults have such
identification." Posner noted that, "No doubt most people who don't have
photo ID are low on the economic ladder," but assumed that only a small
number would be affected, writing, "The fewer the people who will actually
disfranchise themselves rather than go to the bother and, if they are not
indigent and don't have their birth certificate and so must order a copy
and pay a fee, the expense of obtaining a photo ID, the less of a showing
the state need make to justify the law." In his dissenting opinion Judge
Terence Evans noted that the group without driver's
license or passport IDs "is
mostly comprised of people who are poor, elderly, minorities, disabled, or
some combination thereof." (page 13)
In a September 2008 New York Review of Books essay on
Obama: The Price of Being
Black, political scientist Andrew Hacker uses the ETI research to
gauge the impact of the Indiana court decision on black Americans
seeking to vote in the 2008 presidential election. Hacker estimates that
44,000 black residents in Indianapolis alone could need transportation to
the DMV to complete a nondriver ID application allowing them to vote.
Career Staff in Justice Department Called for ETI-Type Analysis in
Georgia
In their
August 25, 2005 review of the proposed Georgia voter registration
procedures, the career staff in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil
Rights
Division noted that the disparity ratio between whites and blacks lacking
vehicle access in Georgia households was similar to that for Wisconsin
and warned that the ETI data on disparities between blacks and whites on
possession of a driver's license also likely applied. Staff noted,
"This data suggests that complete records, or at least a more
representative sample from Georgia would be expected to yield a stronger
correlation between driver's license ownership and race. As this [ETI]
study shows strong patterns of racial disparity among driver's license
ownership in Wisconsin, it further underscores our concerns about the
reliability of the Georgia DDS data, and suggests that predictions of
driver's license ownership may be better analogized from vehicle access
data ... As it is logical to infer that the relationship between owning a
car and having a driver's license are similar in the two states, and the
ratio of black to white households without vehicles are similar in Georgia
and Wisconsin, an inference that a racial gap exists in driver's license
ownership is appropriate." (p. 27)
The staff concluded: "While no single piece of data confirms that blacks
will [be] disparately impacted compared to whites, the totality of the
evidence points to that conclusion ... [I]t appears that neither the
legislature nor the submitting authority conducted any analysis or
presented any data regarding these racial disparities in access to various
forms of photo identification. This leads us to conclude that the state
has failed to meet its burden of demonstrating that the change is not
retrogressive." (p.31)
The recommendations of the staff were rejected, and the
following day Justice Department officials gave preclearance to the
Georgia
voter photo identification law as being in compliance with Section 5 of
the
Voting Rights Act. U.S. Assistant Attorney General William Moschella
later
informed the Senate that,
"[A]ll individual data indicates that the State's African-American
citizens are, if anything, slightly more likely than white
citizens
to possess one of the necessary forms of identification." He further
stated, "The reality in Georgia is that the number of eligible voters who
currently hold no photo identification from the Department of Driver
Services ("DDS") is extremely small."
It appears from statements issued by Justice Department officials that the
unmeasured disparate impact of driver's license possession on African
Americans was considered to be offset by a second disparate impact on
elderly residents of Georgia who, according to
John Tanner, Voting Rights Section chief, are predominantly white.
Tanner subsequently left this position for another post within the Justice
Department.
Congressmen Cite ETI
Research
in
Call for Ban on Photo ID Requirements for Voting
On November 1, 2007, Congressmen Keith Ellison of Minnesota, John Lewis
of Georgia, and John Conyers of Michigan introduced
legislation
to ban photo ID requirements for voting. Ellison cited the ETI
research as evidence of the possible disparate impact of photo IDs on
African
Americans, Latinos and elderly voters.
Michigan State Supreme Court Reviewed ETI Research
In July 2007 the Michigan state Supreme Court majority issued an
advisory opinion
upholding the constitutionality of the state voter ID law passed in 2005.
The majority opinion dismissed the state attorney general's observation
that the laws would limit access to the ballot for "poor, racial and
ethnic minorities, elderly, and the disabled" by arguing that voters
without photo IDs could use an affidavit process to vote. (p. 20)
In his dissent Michael F. Cavanaugh cited the ETI research as the basis
for his estimate that "hundreds of thousands of Michigan citizens will be
affected by this legislation ... [indicating] that the requirement is a
serious impediment on the fundamental right to vote for these citizens."
(p.25)
Law Review Articles Call for More Empirical Work Like the ETI
Research
In a law review article on "Voter Identification" in the
Michigan Law Review (February 2007),
Spencer Overton argues that, "Existing data [including the ETI report]
suggest that the number of legitimate voters who would fail to bring photo
identification to the polls is several times higher than the number of
fraudulent voters, and that a photo-identification requirement would
preclude political outcomes that are less reflective of the electorate as
a whole." (p.1) After citing ETI research on percentages of African
American men ages 18-24 without a driver's license, college students in
dormitories without a license at that address, and racial differences in
renters and homeowners who move, Overton called for "more detailed
empirical work ... to determine the extent to which a photo-identification
requirement will shape the electorate." (p. 662) Overton, who served on
the Commission on Federal Election Reform, argues that judges "should
demand statistical data to ensure that voter identification procedures are
appropriately tailored to deter fraudulent voters rather than legitimate
ones and do not disproportionately exclude protected classes of voters."
(p.1)
In a second law review article entitled "If It's Broke, Fix It: Improving
Voting Rights Act
Preclearance" and published in the
Howard Law Review (2006), Daniel P. Tokaji describes the ETI research
as "the most detailed state-level study of who lacks a driver's license"
and further observes: "Unfortunately, studies of driver's license
possessions have not as yet been conducted for Georgia or other states."
(p. 814) Tokaji's research assistant attempted unsuccessfully to obtain
comparable data from the Ohio Registry of Motor Vehicles on the race of
driver's license holders in that state. (Note 184 on p. 814) Tokaji
recommends creation of a bipartisan Voting Rights Enforcement Commission
as an alternative to the Department of Justice staff for determining
preclearance for voting requirements in states subject
to Section 5 of the
Voting Rights Act.
Other law review articles citing the Pawasarat voter ID study include Gilda Daniels,
Gilda Daniels,
"A Vote Delayed is a Vote Denied: A Preemptive Approach to Eliminating Election Administration Legislation that Disenfranchises Unwanted Voters," in the Brandeis Law Journal (forthcoming); Michael J. Pitts, "Empirically Assessing the Impact of Photo Identification at the Polls Through an Examination of Provisional Balloting," in the Journal of Law and Politics (forthcoming); and
Daniel P. Tokaji, "Leave It to the Lower Courts: On Judicial Intervention in Election Administration," in the
Ohio State Law Journal, 2007.
In his
veto
of legislation to require photo IDs to vote in Wisconsin, Governor Jim
Doyle cited the ETI research. "I am vetoing SB-42 for the same reasons
that I vetoed AB 63: it unfairly restricts the right to vote at the
expense of far too many of Wisconsin's law-abiding, elderly citizens. Two
months ago, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee released a study showing
that over 177,000 elderly persons in Wisconsin aged 65 and older do not
possess a driver's license or state photo identification. Thus, under
this proposal, nearly one-quarter of Wisconsin's elderly population could
be disenfranchised. I cannot allow that to happen." Doyle introduced
alternative legislation, without the photo ID requirement, to improve the
election processes, but those proposals were not taken up by the
Legislature.
In May 2011, legislation requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls was
passed and signed by Governor Scott Walker, Doyle's successor.
David B. Muhlhausen and Keri Weber Sikich in a
Heritage Foundation paper on "New Analysis Shows Voter Identification
Laws Do Not Reduce Turnout" cite the ETI research findings of disparate
rates of driver's license possession for African Americans and Hispanics
compared to whites and findings that the elderly are less likely to have
driver's licenses or other government-issued identification. The authors
take the position that "Although these figures shed light on the types of
people who are less likely to have driver's licenses ... the data still
cannot tell us whether those individuals without driver's licenses have
some other form of identification . . . [and] cannot tell us about future
behavior." (p.5)
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In an unfortunately shoddy attack on the ETI research, a July 2011 Heritage Foundation article by Hans A. von Spakovsky reported in a footnote that Pawasarat's study had been criticized in an article by the Center for Democracy & Election Management at American University for overstating "the percentage of residents without a driver's license by oversampling African-Americans and low-income people and failing to adjust their estimates." We were puzzled by this criticism since the Pawasarat study does not involving sampling but is a review of the entire driver's license population in the state using DMV records. It turns out that the CDEM report, entitled Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States, doesn't accuse Pawasarat of oversampling African Americans or low-income people or of failing to adjust estimates of these population. Instead, it reports that someone else criticized Pawasarat's research "for overstating the percentage of residents without a driver's license." The source of this "criticism" according to the CDEM, was a newspaper article that covered Pawasarat's just released study and included a comment from a faculty professor saying he thought the study overstated the number of people lacking an ID. The commenter made no reference to African Americans, low-income people, or oversampling. (Nor did the article indicate whether the commenter had actually read the newly released Pawasarat study.) |
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A policy brief by Project Vote on "Restrictive Voter Identification Requirements" raises concerns about Voter ID laws causing persons to be turned away from the polls for driver's licenses which do not contain the voter's current address. The policy paper references as concerns the ETI research on college students who do not have their current address on their photo ID and the disparities in driver's license possession between whites and African Americans. A monograph by John R. Lott on "Evidence of Voter Fraud and the Impact that Regulation to Reduce Fraud Have on Voter Participation Rates" (cited in the Journal of the Federalist Society Practice Groups) criticizes the ETI and National Commission on Electoral Reform research as providing "only a very crude measure of whether photo ID requirements will prevent people from voting." Lott continues, "Some people without driver's licenses will not vote even when there are no photo ID requirements and others will go out to get a photo ID in order to vote. Just because they don't have a photo ID at some point in time (when they may not have any reason to have such an ID), doesn't imply that they won't get one when they have a good reason to do so." (p. 3) A commentary in Mother Jones by Tova Andrea Wang and Jonah H. Goldman on "Photo ID Requirement Compromises Voter Rights" used the ETI study's statistics on racial disparities to bolster the position that, "The citizens who do not have photo identification are mostly poor, minority, elderly, disabled and young voters. This is largely because these voters cannot afford the requisite fees for obtaining photo IDs, and they are less likely than other voters to own a car or regularly drive. Case in point, a June 2005 University of Wisconsin study ..." The authors call for improvements in voter information, training of pool workers, location of polling places, security of voting systems, and investigation and prosecution of fraud rather than denying citizens without a photo ID access to vote. The Politico website posted an article by Ben Adler on "Campus Voting Access Not Making the Grade," which raised concerns about Voter ID laws effect on young people. Concern was raised about the number of African Americans (74%) and Hispanics (66%) aged 18-24 without a valid driver's license and students without their current school address on their photo ID. The University of Texas at Austin student government referenced the ETI report in a proposed resolution in opposition to photo requirements for voting. The "ID Divide": The Economics of Government Identification Programs
A prescient
February 1994 article in WIRED Magazine
explored the use of the DMV (state department of motor vehicles) as a collection agency
for unpaid parking tickets, municipal fines and civil forfeitures. State DMV officials in Massachusetts,
Oregon and Wisconsin reported high rates of payments for drivers threatened with loss of their license.
The article also explored
the growing use of the driver's license as an control instrument, particularly for teenagers,
citing examples of Kentucky's 1990 "high school dropout law" (which prohibited high school students from obtaining or keeping a driver's license if they had 9 or more unexcused absences or failed to pass 4 of their courses), Oregon's law preventing teens with underage drinking or illegal drug use violations from obtaining a license until age 17 (or age 18 if the violation occurred during the teen's seventeenth year), and Wisconsin's withholding of driving privileges for non-payment of any municipal fine (including violations unrelated to driving).
The current impact of such laws can be seen in Milwaukee County, where the experiences of teens prohibited from obtaining licenses were tracked for the
Center for Driver's License Recovery & Employability. In 2000, the innercity areas of the City of Milwaukee showed the highest number of unlicensed teens with a "trap" on their future licenses due to suspensions and revocations (many due to failure to pay fines unrelated to driving, such as curfew violations, jaywalking, underage drinking) and the lowest rate of recovery from such traps. A total of 3,389 youth ages 15 through 17 had suspensions and revocations entered into the DMV system but no license, and only 16% of these teens subsequently obtained a license as young adults, according to the April 2008 DMV file. By contrast, the more affluent suburban areas of the county showed the lowest number of teens with unpaid fines resulting in suspensions and revocations. Even in the Milwaukee County suburbs, however, less than half of teens recovered from such pre-license
traps and secured their license by 2008.
A 2008 study on
The ID Divide: Addressing the Challenge of Identification and Authentication in American Society by Peter Swire and Cassandra Butts uses the ETI voter ID study to help identify groups that disproportionately lack IDs in today's society. The report warns that "those on the wrong side of the ID Divide are finding themselves squeezed out of many parts of daily life, including finding a job, opening a bank account, flying on an airplane, and even exercising their right to vote." (p.1)
Background on the ETI Driver's License Research
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute
has been researching and mapping driver's
license issues for the last two decades as access to a valid driver's license
is one of the most important employment issues facing central city
Milwaukee residents. (See
Removing
Transportation Barriers to Employment: Assessing Driver's License and
Vehicle Ownership Patterns of Low-Income Populations, 1998, and
Removing
Transportation Barriers to Employment: The Impact of Driver's License
Suspension Policies on Milwaukee County Teens, 2000.)
The economic importance of a driver's license
cannot
be overstated in Milwaukee's labor market, where three-fourths of area
job
openings are located in the Milwaukee County suburbs and
suburban/exurban areas of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties --
areas not usually accessible by public transportation.
A number of
Employment and Training Institute technical assistance
projects have observed that possession of a valid driver's license and
access to a vehicle are strong predictors of better success in the labor
market. For Milwaukee women with children on public assistance, the
driver's license has been shown to be more critical than even
a high school diploma in predicting steady employment. A
2008 study of Milwaukee County clients assisted by the Center for Driver's License Recovery & Employability found early gains of $253 a month in earnings for women obtaining their driving privileges.
In a recent study
identifying
employment barriers for Workforce Investment Act clients, program
participants with a valid driver's license were 2 times more likely to
show earnings above the family poverty level than those without a license.
For WIA participants with less than 12 years of education, workers with a
valid license were 4 times more likely to show post-program earnings above
the poverty level than those without a license.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board has made a
series of recommendations for improving the situation where thousands of Milwaukee County workers have suspended or revoked licenses.
The Employment and Training Institute
driver's license/voter ID
study,
which examined individual driver's license records and state ID files from
the State of Wisconsin, found large subpopulations of residents likely
to face problems voting under various Voter ID laws proposed in the state. This included:
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UWM Employment and Training Institute Direct comments to eti@uwm.edu Updated 2012 |