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Abstract

The gap between the percentage of registered White voters who cast a ballot and that of registered nonwhite voters in the 2020 United States Presidential election was approximately 13 percent. This trend varies widely across the United States due to state legislators having jurisdiction to craft, enact, and implement election and voting legislation. In 2022, 408 pieces of legislation that would have made it more difficult to register to vote, cast a ballot, or stay on the voter rolls were considered in 39 states and 11 made it into state codes across the country. Given the increase in legislation considered and passed by legislatures, this paper explores the effect of such policies on voter turnout by race in Presidential elections between 1996 to 2016. Utilizing state-level data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and the Cost of Voting Index, the analyses indicate that voting policies that increase the costs associated with voting have a moderate, negative relationship on voter turnout levels for overall voters, White voters, and Black voters. Fore Asian voters, the relationship is not statistically significant, therefore, it cannot be concluded by this analysis alone that there is a relationship between the cost of voting and voter turnout rate for Asian voters.

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