Via HotAir, a look from Bryan Preston at Texas voter ID laws in action:
For weeks leading up to the 2013 off-year elections, prominent Texas Democrats directly blamed the state’s new voter ID law for problems in registration…
Democrats who oppose voter ID have consistently claimed that it suppresses votes. If they are correct, then Texas should have seen turnout drop off in 2013 compared with the closest comparable election…
According to the Texas secretary of state’s office, 10 amendments were up for vote in 2011, the last constitutional amendment election before the voter ID law passed…Overall, an average of about 672,874 Texans voted on these 10 constitutional amendments.
…nine amendments went up for vote in 2013…The average number of votes cast in 2013 was 1,099,670.
So, in terms of raw votes, turnout in 2013 increased by about 63% over turnout in 2011 in comparable elections.
…Democrats allege that voter ID will suppress the vote in predominantly Hispanic regions. Hidalgo County sits on the Texas-Mexico border and is 90% Hispanic. In 2011, an average of just over 4,000 voted in the constitutional amendment election. In 2013, an average of over 16,000 voted.
Of course that doesn’t settle the argument; both from the standpoint that it takes a good deal more facts to prove anything conclusively, and from the standpoint that the Left won’t care about the facts. But, as Preston concludes:
If voter ID was intended to suppress votes, it is failing as spectacularly as HealthCare.gov.