GETTING TO THE BALLOT BOX: The Changing Climate of Electoral Laws and Its Impact on Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections

In recent years, state governments have increasingly passed legislation that signals a stricter trend in voting rules. This work examines the extent to which changes in state voting legislation impact overall turnout, as well as turnout by race and ethnicity, in presidential elections. I hypothesize that in states in which more stringent voting laws were imposed, turnout would decline and that a negative directional change in the law would be brought more heavily to bear upon minority populations. I find no impact of increasingly stringent voting laws on overall turnout. However, when examining turnout by race and ethnicity I find that as stricter state voting legislation is implemented, African American turnout decreases. I argue that should a trend of increased stringency in voting rules continue, African Americans will be unduly prevented from getting to the ballot box