'Doesn't bode well for GOP': Experts say push to gut voter rights has barely affected election results

Republican legislatures have been imposing new restrictions on voting access, but new research suggests those laws aren't tilting the odds in their favor quite as much as feared.

Barack Obama's presidential election win nearly 15 years ago sparked a drive by Republicans to roll back voting rights that gained momentum with the 2013 Supreme Court decision striking down portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and half of all states have enacted new restrictions since 2010.

But researchers have found little evidence of any impact, wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall.

“Contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout tend to have negligible effects on election outcomes,” wrote political scientists Justin Grimmer and Eitan Hersh in their June paper, “How Election Rules Affect Who Wins.”

“Contrary to heated political rhetoric, election policies have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship," Grimmer and Hersh wrote.

The same goes for partisan gerrymandering, which became even more prevalent in the wake of the court's ruling in Shelby County v. Holder.

“Our primary finding is that there was little retrogression in formerly covered states," wrote researchers Nicholas Stephanopolous of Harvard Law School, Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California and Christopher Warshaw of George Washington University. "In sum, the number of minority opportunity districts in these states actually rose slightly. We also show that formerly covered states were largely indistinguishable from formerly uncovered states in terms of retrogression. If anything, states unaffected by Shelby County retrogressed marginally more than did states impacted by the ruling."

However, the researchers agree that voting rights should continue to be expanded, saying despite the minimal impact they've measured to this point, restrictions could help tip close elections and go against democratic principles, and Edsall concluded that Republicans must broaden their message rather than suppress who can actually vote.

"What this suggests is that the American electorate is determined to exercise the franchise and is resistant to legislated hindrances — more so than many would expect," Edsall wrote. "This does not bode well for a Republican Party that for the moment has applied its money, energy and strategic skill to reducing Democratic turnout and suppressing Democratic votes."