Does recent survey lend support for claim that voter ID laws stem from racial animus?

Slate.com's Jamelle Bouie explains why he believes support for restrict voter ID laws is more about politics, not race. Bouie argues that partisanship accounts for a recent survey that found Americans were more likely to support voter ID when shown a picture of black person than of a white person; and for another one in which legistators who supported voter ID were more likely to respond to emails from persons with an "Anglo" sounding name than a "Latino" one. Finally, he cites a third study concluding that support for voter ID is "influenced by the intensity of electoral competition." In the end, Republican support for voter ID stems more from a desire to beat Democrats than to discriminate against racial minorities -- or so the argument goes, I suppose. Bouie writes:

Voter ID boosters don’t hold anti-minority animus as much as they want to maximize political advantage. As Judge Richard Posner wrote in a recent dissent against the Wisconsin voter ID law, “There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, if there is no actual danger of such fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.”

 

Indeed, this ultra-partisanship helps explain the apparent reaction against minorities in the Delware and Southern California studies. If black Americans are Democratic voters and voter ID opponents, and you’re asked to take a stand on voter ID in the context of black voting, then you might show more support, if you’re a Republican voter. It’s not racial, it’s tribal.

 

But it's hard to say this matters. No, voter ID supporters might not hold racial animus, but they end up in the same place as a racist who does: Supporting laws that restrict the vote and hurt minorities.