Lorraine Carol Minnite is a professor of

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

, as well as an associate professor of

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public p ...

, at

Rutgers University-Camden Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

Education

Minnite received her bachelor's degree in history from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...

, and her masters' and PhD degrees in political science from the City University of New York.

Career

Prior to joining the faculty of Rutgers, Minnite taught at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

and

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

, served as Associate Director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, and as Research Director for the nonprofit voting rights organization Project Vote.

Work

Minnite's research focuses on issues in American politics, including

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, Equal opportunity, opportunities, and Social privilege, privileges within a society. In Western Civilization, Western and Culture of Asia, Asian cultures, the concept of social ...

, political conflict, and institutional change. She has also written two books on election law and racial and class politics in the United States. In a 2009 study co-authored with Robert Erikson, she found inconsistent and weak evidence that voter ID laws reduced turnout. She has argued in her 2010 book, ''The Myth of Voter Fraud'', that

voter impersonation Voter impersonation, also sometimes called in-person voter fraud, is a form of electoral fraud in which a person who is eligible to vote in an election votes more than once, or a person who is not eligible to vote does so by voting under the name ...

is very rare in the United States—in fact, when researching the subject while writing the book, she identified only one case of voter impersonation from 2000 to 2005, involving a teenager in

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...

who voted as his father. In the same book, she found that in 2005, the federal government charged far more people with violating migratory bird laws than with committing voter fraud.

Views

Minnite has argued that with respect to

voter ID laws A voter identification law is a law that requires a person to show some form of identification in order to vote. In some jurisdictions requiring photo IDs, voters who do not have photo ID often must have their identity verified by someone els ...

, "the costs are very high and the benefits are practically non-existent," and that it does not make sense for illegal immigrants to commit voter fraud because, according to her, "People who are here who are undocumented don't tend to go around trying to, you know, bring attention to themselves, especially doing something that is illegal." She has testified against voter ID laws in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Minnite, Lorraine Carol Living people Rutgers University–Camden faculty Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni American women political scientists American political scientists City University of New York alumni Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women