The focus on electoral math obscures the bigger story on Georgia's new voting laws

Attempts to restrict the franchise are normatively bad, regardless of their effects. Coverage should reflect that. Also, notes on the limits of social science.

Nate Cohn has a piece in the New York Times today in which he writes that the backlash to the new voting restriction law in Georgia is dramatically overstated because the partisan effects of those restrictions is minimal.

The latter clause of that sentence is true: studies of most voting laws in the past decade have not shown large, meaningful effects on turnout or on the partisan makeup of people who end up voting. The context of the election is generally much more important for driving government turnout. Here is Cohn’s recap of the evidence:

There’s essentially no evidence that the vast expansion of no-excuse absentee mail voting, in which anyone can apply for a mail absentee ballot, had any discernible effect on turnout in 2020. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise: Even universal vote by mail, in which every registered voter is automatically sent a mail ballot (as opposed to every voter having an opportunity to apply for one), increases turnout by only about 2 percent with no discern…