Despite claims by Democrats that Republicans’ SAVE Act requiring a photo ID to vote is “Jim Crow 2.0” and would disenfranchise Black voters, results of a new CBS News poll reveal that it would actually increase voting by Black and Hispanic citizens.
Results of the CBS/YouGov survey of U.S. adults, conducted March 16-19, show that 80% of Blacks and 77% favor “requiring people to show valid photo identification before they are permitted to vote.” Among all U.S. adults voicing an opinion, 80% support the requirement and 20% oppose it.
And – contrary to Democrats’ claim that a photo ID requirement is racist – the CBS poll reveals that such proof-of-eligibility requirements would actually make Blacks and Hispanics more likely to vote.
More than twice as many Blacks say they would be more likely to vote as say it would make them less likely to do so (26% vs. 12%), if voters were required to show documents such as a U.S. passport, birth certificate, or a real-ID drivers’ license to cast a vote.
Likewise, more than twice as many Hispanics say they’d be more prone to vote if these voter ID requirements were in place as say they’d be less likely to vote (31% vs. 13%).
In all, 22% of U.S. adults say they’d be more likely to vote, 9% say they’d be less likely and 68% say it would have no influence on their propensity to vote.
While a CBS News article reporting the results Thursday did not mention this question about the effect of a voter ID requirement, it did link to all the questions and results of the survey.
Blacks and Hispanics also support requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Fully 60% of Blacks and 63% of Hispanics say they favor requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration, while 40% and 37% don’t, respectively. Among all U.S. adults, 66% favor and 34% oppose the proof-of-citizenship requirement.
Blacks and Hispanics adults are twice as likely as Democrat adults, taken as a whole, to consider illegal voting to be a problem.
A 54% majority of Democrat adults say “People casting votes who are not eligible to do so” is “not a problem.” In contrast, only 32% of Blacks, 33% of Hispanics and 32% of all U.S. adults agree that illegal voting isn’t a problem.
Conversely, illegal voting is viewed as a “major problem” by 39% of Blacks, 40% of Hispanics and 42% of all U.S. adults – but, only 20% of all Democrats.
The CBS News survey results mirror those of a recent Pew survey reported by CNN, which found that 76% of Blacks, 82% of Latinos and 83% of all U.S. adults support the voter photo ID requirement.
