Richardson, John2024-02-122024-02-1210.15786/13701109https://wyoscholar.uwyo.edu/handle/internal/6503https://doi.org/10.15786/13701109This paper presents a synthesis of background information, major studies, and court cases related to voter identification laws and their impacts on voter turnout in states across the United States. There is a veritable wealth of information regarding this topic, and the state of these laws and their impacts vary widely from decade to decade. The purpose of this project was to present an amalgam of the available research and to draw conclusions from that effort. In doing so, it is clear that as of the completion of this project, strict voter identification laws are directly responsible for lower turnout among voters that identify with and vote for the Democratic Party. This paper also examined the effects of voter identification laws on individuals that traditionally vote for the Republican Party and provided some cursory conclusions about the effects of these laws on those individuals in the years to come.enghttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/thesis