The Georgia election law's restrictions on voting are unlikely to discernibly affect turnout or the result
nytimes.com/2021/04/03/ups…
I've limited my analysis to the provisions affecting whether and how people can vote, not those that empower the state legislature to play a larger role in election administration. More on those later, but those provisions don't inherently affect voting access in a particular way
I also like to say that I do think it's important for journalists to report about the consequences of these laws, not just their intent or morality, for a few reasons.
For starters, many political actors are operating under--and even motivated by--the erroneous assumption that these laws have existential stakes for electoral outcomes. That has real world consequences.
After all, part of why these laws are being pushed is because they think they'll do something!
Conversely, the reform bill HR1 has no chance to find bipartisan support so long as people really believe it could doom the Republican Party (it would not).
Similarly, if you want to protect democracy--and make sure HR1 does--you do need to be able to prioritize, and distinguish nuisances from fundamental threats.
In the worst case, reformers could overlook more severe but less self-evidently morally repugnant threats
As an aside: after several days of hoping to have clear sense about whether or how the state legislature could abuse this law by usurping administrative powers, I did not come up with a clear and satisfactory answer.
I do think there are a lot of possible powers that could be abused (yes, this risk already existed to be clear). But I don't think anyone has fully thought through either the extent that these powers could be misused--or what you could really get away if you tried
Could a partisan GA administrator, even in 2020, have successfully 'found' the 11k votes, through decertification or eligibility challenges, and survived court challenge? I don't think the answer is absolutely certain.
I actually agree with virtually every single thing in this thread.
(But for context, my focus on advance/no-excuse abs voting is a reflection of the GA law, which restricts no-excuse absentee voting without touching things we agree do matter, like autoreg)
Voter reg is so important because it effects who *can* vote: if you aren't registered, you *can't* vote.
In that sense, tough voter reg laws actually are kind of reminiscent of Jim Crow, which also targeted who *can* vote (can't pay poll tax? you *can't* vote)
In contrast, the GA law provisions on voting mainly effect *how* you can vote.
And while restrictions on "how" can amount to disenfranchisement (imagine one site per state!), the balance of research suggests that if you can vote, you'll figure out how in typical circumstances

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More from @Nate_Cohn

2 Apr
I do think there’s a credible, somewhat counterintuitive case that Democrats would have been better off if the GA GOP got rid of no excuse absentee voting altogether, v make it more difficult and risk higher rejections
This supposes that no excuse absentee voting does little to nothing to increase turnout, which I think is probably right. It’s less clear whether the GA law would increase rejections by more, but it’s uncertain enough to be imaginable
And the GA law does quite a bit to make it harder, between ID requirements and the huge dropbox restrictions. Not hard to imagine the law trapping Dem voters in a more difficult voting method
Read 8 tweets
31 Mar
One thing I've been thinking about lately: how different is the optimal voting system in a low-trust and high-trust society? What about in a society where partisans will play no-holds barred to win, versus one where democratic norms are strong?
To take an easy example from 2020: maybe it's not optimal for the vote count to last three weeks in a low trust society. There's nothing wrong with it, strictly speaking. It could have advantages. But maybe it's not worth the risk if there are bad actors and low trust
I can imagine taking this to more extreme places where there would probably way more debate: say, arguing against multiple forms of voting with varying eligibility, as it creates distinct categories of voters/ballots that can be targeted by law, election admin, courts, etc
Read 4 tweets
25 Mar
It's an open question whether polling is 'dead.' Maybe it was simply hospitalized in critical condition and no one can be sure whether it will get out
One of the best hope for polling is the theory that the error/bias was mainly just about the coronavirus, for instance. Our Oct. 2019 polls were way better than Oct. 2020! The poll averages in Feb/Mar 2020 were way better too. But I think the evidence is pretty inconclusive
That said, history offers plenty of reason to hope that polling could leave the hospital. So if that's the main @NateSilver538 position here, then he's right that we may not disagree as deeply as I think
Read 4 tweets
25 Mar
I don't really agree with @NateSilver538's glass-half full perspective on the 2020 polling miss
fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-d…
I'd boil down the disagreement to one fundamental thing: I think low systemic bias is far, far more important than important for thinking about the polls than average error, while I think @NateSilver538 looks a lot more at average error
You can see both the magnitude of systemic bias in this chart, along with the case that there's a trend toward greater systemic bias. And fwiw, I think the D+5 bias is probably mitigated by some 'nonpartisan' firms that, tbh, aren't so nonpartisan or above the board
Read 17 tweets
9 Mar
Unlike most GOP restrictions on mail voting, this one targets a group of voters who backed Trump in 2020
For what it's worth, Fox News didn't know this either and that's why they prematurely called Arizona for Biden
Read 4 tweets
8 Mar
Would you support or oppose the following electoral system? (described in following tweets; poll in this tweet)
Basics:
--Four days of in-person early voting, including a weekend
--No excuse absentee voting, but application and ID required; ballot must be received by poll close (can drop off at staffed site (precinct)
--Same day and auto reg.
--Voter ID required, described in next tweet
Voter ID requirement met by one of the following: government issued photo-ID with address; two forms identification, both with name at least one with address (say, a utility bill and student ID); a sworn declaration by you and a reg. voter with ID who vouches for you.
Read 4 tweets

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