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Study Finds White People More In Support Of Voter Suppression Laws After Seeing Black People Vote via Kulture Kritic Researchers from the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication have released a new study suggesting that photographs of black Americans using voting machines affect white respondents’ support of voter-ID laws. According to the study (pdf), when white survey respondents saw an image of black Americans using ballot machines, they had stronger support for voter ID than those who did not see the image. Furthermore, seeing white Americans using ballot machines had no impact on respondents’ support of the controversial laws. “Our findings suggest that public opinion about voter-ID laws can be racialized by simply showing images of African-American people,” David C. Wilson, who helped supervise the nationwide study, said. For the survey, which was conducted online in 2012, respondents were divided into three groups, one of which saw an image of black voters, one that saw an image of white voters and one that saw no image at all. In the first group, which saw a picture of black voters, 73 percent of white respondents said that they favored voter-ID laws. This is in comparison with the white respondentsin the remaining two groups, who were 67 percent in favor. The 6-percentage-point difference is big enough to be statistically significant, researchers say. “Majorities in all three groups favored voter-ID laws, but the margin was wider when white respondents saw a black person using a voting machine,” Wilson said.

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Fear Of Black Skin: Study Finds White Residents Who See Black People Voting Are More In Favor Of Voter Suppression Laws