I'm not quite sure what to do with one of the witnesses. I'll leave it for the moment.
Professor Mycoff, thank you so much for being available.
I, too, have had a chance to read your six-page piece called, “The Empirical Effects of Voter-ID Laws: Present or Absent?” I just want to make sure that I fully understand the import.
You just said that there's no direct relation and no evidence that voter ID cards affect turnout, turnout being your reference point, but throughout your piece, you're making comparative evaluations between other more significant factors and voter ID requirements.
You say that voter identification laws appear to be a much smaller piece than are other factors. You say, “While strict ID requirements have the potential to burden some members of the electorate, our analyses suggest that these numbers are small.”
You cite, “0.2% of potential voters claimed to have been excluded from voting due to ID requirements”. By the time you amalgamate that, those are real individuals, not just statistics.
You also say, “our question is whether these laws have significantly reduced turnout”.
Then you say, “Even if voter-ID laws do have pronounced empirical effects, once political interest is taken into account...”, etc., etc.
Can I just double-check that you want to stand by this claim that there's no direct relation, no evidence at all that there's some impact?