Johnson's Theory of Rational Abstention Further Validates that Conservative Voting Restrictions are Unreasonable

An article just released by Vox News, recounts Chief Justice John Roberts' long "crusade" against certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) which climaxed with him leading the Supreme Court in striking down the section of the VRA that required states with a history of implementing racist voting restrictions to be pre-cleared by the federal government before implementing any new voting restrictions. This decision was important because the lack of preclearance has now allowed states such as North Carolina to implement voting restrictions that have in some cases, as a Federal Appeals Courts stated, targeted "African American [voters] with almost surgical precision" (Vox, 2020). 

While it is understandable for their to be some restrictions to limit widespread voter fraud, restrictions beyond those that come as a result of registering to vote and keeping up-to-date voter rolls to prevent someone from voting in two separate states or voting for a deceased relative, are unreasonable. This is because as Johnson concludes in his chapter on Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance, many Americans already chose not to vote because the opportunity cost of voting once is larger than the benefit and therefore, the opportunity cost of attempting to vote more than once must be even larger than the benefit of doing so. And therefore, this large opportunity cost acts as a disincentive to even attempt to commit voter fraud.  

As Johnson writes, the opportunity cost of doing even the simplest tasks such as driving to the polling place and waiting in line to cast a ballot far outweigh the possible benefit that that single vote could bring the voter; especially when considering the low probability that that single vote will decide the outcome of the election. So if we consider the fact that 1) there is a low probability that there will ever be enough rational voters in a given election who would use their time and money to figure out how to vote more than once, to the swing an election, 2) that there is also a low probability that someone can successfully vote more than once even without restrictions such as voter ID laws, and 3) that there are costly penalties for anyone caught committing voter fraud; the cost, when considering potential civil penalties, and opportunity cost, when considering the forgone leisure and work time, of successfully committing voter fraud are much too large for a rational voter to even consider attempting it. Therefore, voting restrictions beyond those that come with the identification process of registering to vote and keeping updated voter rolls, are unnecessary. And as has recently been the case in states such as Georgia, voting restrictions have in fact disenfranchised the limited amount of people who actually choose to vote, despite the high opportunity cost of doing so; and even may have increased the opportunity cost of voting.