Election Integrity: 62% Don’t Think Voter ID Laws Discriminate

Most voters say it’s more important to prevent cheating in elections than to make it easier to vote and, by more than a two-to-one margin, they reject claims that voter ID laws are discriminatory.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 29% of Likely U.S. Voters say laws requiring photo identification at the polls discriminate against some voters. Sixty-two percent (62%) say voter ID laws don’t discriminate. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

A majority (51%) of voters believe it is likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, including 35% who say it’s Very Likely cheating affected the election.   WOW!

The survey of 1,000 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on April 11-12, 2021 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Concerns about cheating have plagued President Joe Biden ever since Election Day. In November, a Rasmussen Reports survey found 47% of voters believed it was likely that Democrats stole votes or destroyed pro-Trump ballots in several states to ensure that Biden would win. An overwhelming majority of GOP voters believe Democrats cheated in 2020. Republican officials have responded by launching an election integrity project to make it “easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

Asked which is more important, making it easier for everybody to vote, or making sure there is no cheating in elections, 60% of Likely Voters say it’s more important to prevent cheating, while 37% said it’s more important to make it easier to vote.   Georgia did both!

Only 22% of voters say it is currently too hard to vote, while 34% said it’s too easy to vote, and 41% say the level of difficulty in voting is about right.

Majorities of all racial groups – 59% of whites, 56% of Blacks and 63% of other minority voters – say it is more important to make sure there is no cheating in elections than to make it easier to vote.  Georgia did both!

Likewise, majorities of all racial groups – 64% of whites, 59% of Blacks and 58% of other minority voters – reject the claim that voter ID laws discriminate against some voters.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats say it is more important to make it easier to vote, a view shared by just 15% of Republicans and 34% of unaffiliated voters.

Among voters who say it’s Very Likely that cheating affected the 2020 election outcome, 92% say it’s more important to prevent cheating than to make it easier to vote.

President Biden’s strongest supporters are least likely to say preventing cheating in elections is a higher priority. Among voters who strongly approve of Biden’s job performance as president, just 17% say it’s more important to make sure there is no cheating in elections than to make it easier to vote. By contrast, among voters who strongly disapprove of Biden’s performance, 79% say it’s more important to prevent cheating.

Seventy-five percent (75%) say requiring voters to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote is necessary to “a fair and secure election process.”

After Georgia passed a new election law, Major League Baseball (MLB) decided to punish Georgia by moving the annual All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver. Most Americans think it’s a bad idea to mix sports and politics, but a majority of Democratic voters say MLB made the right decision.