In a word, the great majority of the people who filed affidavits were very good voters, not casual ones. They were more likely to have voted in previous city council elections than the other people who voted last month. They tended to be middle-aged, rather than young. And they were overwhelmingly Democratic - something like 80% are coded on my file as Dems, compared to 10% ticket-splitters and 10% Republicans. These folks do not appear to have been a random assortment of people who have lost or forgotten their wallets. Of the nearly 11,000 people who cast ballots, 3700 used absentee ballots, so only about 7000 appeared at the polls on election day. Of those, almost exactly 1% filled out affidavits saying they didn't "possess" ID, and my guess is that between 2/3 and 3/4 of those were filed by people who were really trying to either test or protest the system. Of the remaining fifteen or so, many were young or lacked a consistent history of voting. Those people - about 0.2% of the total walk-in votes - represent the nucleus of concern. Interestingly, there was no geographic clustering - affidavits were filed in 31 of Lansing's 43 precincts. That suggests there was no organized effort, but just the random result of a bunch of Democratic-leaning activists to challenge the law on their own. |
