The Nation Blames Hillary's Loss in Wisconsin on Worthless Voter ID 'Study'

It’s stunning to see a headline that appears legitimate and makes people think, “Wow. If this is true, then somebody needs to do something!” Of course, dig a little, and suddenly, the clever headline leads to a preposterous story that doesn’t pass the sniff test.

The Nation, in what appears to be a new attempt to turn Hillary Clinton into a victim rather than a lousy presidential candidate, offers this headline:

Wisconsin’s Voter-ID Law Suppressed 200,000 Votes in 2016 (Trump Won by 22,748)

Sounds sinister, right?

The story starts with a horror story about a man who recently moved to Wisconsin from Illinois and couldn’t obtain a license in time to vote. The Nation notes this as a “strict” voter-ID requirement. As we’ll learn, the requirement for voting is strict, but the process to get a state ID to vote is quite easy.

The story goes on to say Priorities USA conducted the study. They found:

While states with no change to voter identification laws witnessed an average increased turnout of +1.3% from 2012 to 2016, Wisconsin’s turnout (where voter ID laws changed to strict) dropped by -3.3%. If turnout had instead increased by the national- no-change average, we estimate that over 200,000 more voters would have voted in Wisconsin in 2016.

How do they know this? They don’t. The study is worthless. Priorities USA is a Super PAC that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012. It is true that fewer people voted for Hillary in 2016 than did Obama in 2012, but all that does is leave us with correlation. There is no proof of causation. Priorities USA is doing nothing but making an assumption.

It gets worse:

It’s important to note that this study was conducted by a Democratic Party-affiliated group and has not been peer-reviewed or gone through the typical academic vetting process. While some studies have shown big reductions in turnout among minority voters because of voter-ID laws, others have not.

All this means is the study is complete garbage, and you should not give it a shred of legitimacy.

It just needs to be added to the list of reasons Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump.