For months, Democrats have pressed for a final vote on two proposed laws. The Freedom to Vote Act would override many state laws and set national standards such as a minimum of 15 days for early voting, mail-in ballots and universal rules for voter identification. Another bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would strengthen and restore parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and make it easier for voters to challenge state rules.
On the face of it, his comment would appear only slightly overstated. A McConnell spokesman directed us to census data showing that Black turnout was relatively close to overall turnout in recent elections. That’s not “just as high” as McConnell claimed, but maybe it’s close enough for government work?
McConnell’s spokesman responded with a curveball. “This whole debate is in the context of the Voting Rights Act, looking at the turnout in some of the former preclearance states is instructive,” he said, referring to a section of the law that had prevented Southern states from making voting changes without preapproval from the attorney general or a court ruling. Recent Supreme Court rulings, such as in 2013, have gutted that section of the law.
The spokesman said McConnell’s staff had analyzed census data from the Current Population Survey and come up with interesting findings. He claimed that for the states affected by the Voting Rights Act, the gap between Black and White turnout was much smaller than the national average. (Note that some of the numbers are averages — we will explain that below.)
“The successes in former preclearance states post-Shelby County is weighed down with states like Oregon, a deep blue state which mails every voter a ballot and has Black turnout 28.5% below white turnout; Colorado, a blue state which has a 18.2% delta with the same voting systems as Oregon; Washington, with a 21.3% average delta between white turnout and black turnout; and Massachusetts, which had the worst Black voter turnout in the country,” McConnell’s spokesman said in an email.
“When you remove the missing data, the comparison turnout between the South and non-South changes, and between Whites and non-Whites in Southern states,” said McDonald, from the University of Florida. “For some reason, Massachusetts has one of the largest African-American nonresponse rates.”
“If a respondent does not respond to our question of whether they voted, then we do not consider them to have voted. In other words, if they have no response, we do not consider them to have voted. We calculate voters as those who report voting, and nonvoters as those who report not voting,” the spokesperson said, adding that the raw data at the state level needs to be carefully handled.
In South Carolina, for instance, the turnout for Black voters in 2012 was 69.3 percent, more than the 63.5 percent for White voters. But in 2020, the Black voter turnout was just 53.9 percent, compared with 69 percent for White voters — meaning the gap between the two had shifted by almost 21 percentage points. In Georgia, Black voter turnout was three percentage points higher than White voter turnout in 2012 and more than six percentage points lower in 2020.
McConnell not only overstated the situation a bit, but comparing the turnout of Black voters to the entire voting population is misleading because these numbers are apples and oranges — the entire population (in which the turnout rate is dragged down by other ethnic groups) versus just one ethnic group. The more appropriate comparison is between ethnic groups, such as White Americans and Black Americans. That comparison shows there has been a persistent gap — and it increased in 2020.
This content was originally published here.
