The more Black people in a state, the more restrictive their voting system.

[kpete]

Much of the extant literature has mainly been focused on voter ID laws; but Vandewalker and Bentele find that the strategy is actually more expansive than that. They have created an extensive metric that includes nine different measures of accessibility, including voter ID, absentee voting and same-day registration. They find that the accessibility of voting systems is negatively correlated with the share of the state’s population that is black (see chart). As the black population increases, voting systems become more inaccessible. The chart below includes all changes that were passed in the legislature; as of writing some of the changes were stalled in court.

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The study finds that between 2006 and 2012, the most influential factor in determining whether a law would be passed was Republican control of government. It also finds that the level of anti-black stereotyping in a state (a measure based on survey respondents’ beliefs about work ethic and intelligence) strongly correlates with the proposal (though not the passage) of voting restrictions. Vandewalker and Bentele find that states with a recent increase in Democratic turnout were more likely to pass a restriction indicating “the passage of voter restrictions as a partisan response by Republicans to recent Democratic electoral gains.” States with large black populations were significantly more likely to pass restrictive laws. Finally, they note that what little voter fraud exists does not correlate at all with voter restrictions.


MORE:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/01/our_election_systems_anti_minority_bias_is_even_worse_than_you_think/

[Igel]

1. I can accept the correlation with legislation.

As for the voting technology used, I strongly suspect the convenience overlooking of a nasty, little irritating confound. Most equipment's bought locally. In places I've lived with black majorities or large minorities they were strongly (D). Yet the tech problems were rampant for a variety of reasons, some funding, some driven by other concerns.

And between the effect of the two, voting technology has a stronger effect.

Don't know about some of the others. In many cases, though, some of those constraints are also set locally. And in other cases, disaggregating the effect of partisanship and race--given the desire to make the two line up so neatly--is tricky.

Motivated research.

[MisterP]

2. the danger is that someone with life experience might get in

[Melissa G]

3. Texas is very restrictive and not that Black...

They are also afraid of the Hispanic vote.

[HereSince1628]

4. We also know the greater one party control the more restrictive the voting laws

Funny how we also know it just one party makes that trend happen.

If I were running that, I'd be doing multiple correlations and looking at the partials. I suspect much of the noise seen around that correlation line can be captured into meaning