Suppressing Black Votes: A Historical Case Study of Voting Restrictions in Louisiana

2021/03/05 by Luke Keele, WILLIAM CUBBISON, Ismail K. White · 1 voice · 2 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics

paper · doi:10.1017/s0003055421000034

openalex publication_date 2021/03/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/16

Abstract

Southern states have used a variety of methods to disenfranchise African American voters. Empirical data on the effectiveness of these measures is rare. We present a unique data source from Louisiana that allows us to empirically document voter registration rates from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Using basic time series data, we document how voter registration rates changed over time in response to state restrictions. We then conduct a second analysis, which focuses on Louisiana’s use of the Understanding Clause to reduce voter registration among Blacks. We show that in parishes that used the Understanding Clause, Black registration rates dropped by nearly 30 percentage points, with little effect on white registration. The findings of this paper have important implications for understanding the potential for discrimination in the enforcement of modern, ostensibly nonracial, voter eligibility requirements, such as voter ID laws, which grant substantial discretion to local officials in determining voter eligibility.

Citations

• How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?
• Estimating causal effects of treatments in randomized and nonrandomized studies.
• Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services
• When Should We Use Unit Fixed Effects Regression Models for Causal Inference with Longitudinal Data?

Cited by

• Land of the Freeholder: How Property Rights Make Local Voting Rights
• Learning by proxy: How burdensome policies shape policy implementors' views of government

Discussions

• I don't get anything from confidence intervals on legislative idea points, but they definitely have uncertainty! Or take this amazing graph. The data is measured with a ton of uncertainty, as admitted [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]

Related

• Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies
• The suppression of the Black vote: Resisting today on the shoulders of the Original 33
• Rule by Violence, Rule by Law: Lynching, Jim Crow, and the Continuing Evolution of Voter Suppression in the U.S.
• Sixty years of the Voting Rights Act: progress and pitfalls
• “Restoration” and representation: Legislative consequences of Black disfranchisement in the American South, 1879–1916