“A federal court struck down much of North Carolina’s voter ID law — but what’s left could still shrink the black vote.” Associate Professor Jason Roberts is featured in today’s Washington Post.

Jason Roberts, associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Erik J. Engstrom, professor of political science at the University of California at Davis, are featured in today’s Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog. Their article discusses a provision of North Carolina’s 2013 election law that the courts did not strike down: the removal of the straight-ticket option from North Carolina ballots. Without the option to cast a straight-ticket vote, voters will need more time to cast their ballot, resulting in unusually long lines, which will deter people from voting and increase the number of people who do not fully complete the ballot. Since straight-ticket voting was particularly prevalent in counties with a larger African American population, they expect these effects to be concentrated in highly populated areas with larger concentrations of African American voters.

Read the full article here.