By more than a 3.5-to-1 margin, voters continue to favor Voter Photo IDs to help ensure election integrity. The latest Rasmussen Reports national survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds that 73% believe that photo ID to vote is a reasonable requirement to protect the integrity of elections, just 21% disagree, but it is down slightly from 77% in January..All groups, even a supermajority of Democrats (64% to 30%) and a majority of liberals (52% to 38%), support voter photo IDs. The puzzle is why Democrat politicians vote unanimously against photo IDs even though Democrat likely voters strongly support it.
Interestingly, even though the claim is that photo voter IDs discriminate again the poor and blacks, those making under $30,000/year are the strongest supporters (77% to 15%) and those making over $200,000/year have the weakest support (58% to 33%). For blacks, they strongly support photo IDs (70% to 24%), virtually the same as for whites (73% to 20%).
The next question asked if voter photo IDs discriminate against some voters, and voters say that is not a problem by a 1.5 to 1 ratio (54% to 35%). Again, lower income individuals, blacks, and Hispanics don’t think that the IDs are discriminatory. The people who believe they are discriminatory are Democrats, liberals, those making over $200,000/year, and those who went to graduate school.
A strange aspect of the survey is that even though Democrats and liberals support voter photo IDs and are pretty divided over whether they think that the IDs discriminate against some groups, Democrats and liberals strongly trust the Democrat politicians to do the right thing on the issue. Even more surprisingly is that moderates trust Democrats more.
