Disagreement over ID Requirements and Minority Voter Turnout

I address the debate in this journal about the effects of strict voter ID laws on voter turnout rates of whites and minorities. Although some noteworthy disagreements remain, the exchange has nonetheless resulted in methodological advancements and agreement among the authors on some of the substantive findings. After focusing the discussion on key areas of remaining disagreement, I discuss several ongoing concerns. Specifically, the authors do not actually estimate key quantities of interest, the analyses uncritically combine different kinds of elections where ID laws are likely to have different effects, and no reasonable theory exists to explain why ID laws would increase overall voter turnout beyond the short term.