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 o…