America the Outlier: Voter Photo IDs Are the Rule in Europe and Elsewhere

America the Outlier: Voter Photo IDs Are the Rule in Europe and Elsewhere
A sign urging people to vote is seen during the U.S. general election in Washington, on Nov. 3, 2020. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
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Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections—warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story—of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned.

A database on voting rules worldwide compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they’ve experienced fraud under looser voting regimes.

John R. Lott Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of “Gun Control Myths” (2020), “Dumbing Down the Courts,” and “Freedomnomics.”
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