A Latino-sounding name could be detrimental to voters seeking election information. Harvard University political science graduates Julie Faller, Noah Nathan and Ariel White found in a study that election officials are less likely to give accurate, friendly information to Latinos as opposed to those who sound white, the Huffington Post reported Wednesday. The students conducted the study by ” . . . [contacting] every local official or election commission responsible for overseeing elections for each county or municipality at which elections are administered in 48 states.” Minnesota, Alaska, Maine and Virginia were dropped from the study due to irregularities that prevented gathering accurate data.
One quarter of the emails sent were signed with Latino-sounding names, while another quarter were signed using white-sounding names, the Washington Post reported. The remainder of emails were part of a control group that sent generic questions not pertaining to voter ID laws in order to determine if the nature of the question was a variable in the type of response the questions received.
After more than 5,300 replies, researchers found that Latinos were less likely to get a response at all, let alone an accurate one.
“Responses to Latino names,” the researchers write, “are three-and-a-half to four percentage points less likely than to non-Latino white names.”
The bias is reported to be 3 percent greater when it comes to questions about voter ID laws.
Full Article: Election Officials Biased Against Latinos, Says Harvard University Study : Politics : The Latin Times.
The Voting News
A News Service of the Verified Voting Foundation
