After passing Senate Bill 14 (“SB 14”) in 2011, a stricter voter-ID law, Texas finally implemented SB 14’s new, stricter identification requirements for the first time in a federal general election. Opponents of the law, who maintain that its purpose is to suppress voter turnout, especially among minorities, had managed to successfully delay its enforcement until the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder. In Shelby, the Supreme Court ruled that certain states with a history of discriminating against minority voters no longer need the federal government to approve new voting restrictions. Just as Shelby seemed ready to bolster Texas’s voter law, on October 8th, a federal judge in Texas voided SB 14 on its own merits–only to have that decision stayed by the Fifth Circuit. An emergency appeal of the stay, which, if granted, would have allowed this year’s election to proceed free from SB 14’s requirements, was denied in a 5:00 a.m., Saturday morning decision by the Supreme Court. On November 4, voters in Texas headed to the polls with SB 14 in full force.

Preliminary efforts to track the effects of SB 14 on voter turnout, and other similar laws across the country, have produced somewhat unclear results. The nonpartisan organization Election Protection reported a higher number of complaints this year than in 2010’s midterm election, with the most complaints coming from Georgia, Florida, and Texas—all of which have some form of voter ID law similar to SB 14. In Texas, early voting rates showed a decrease of 1.65 percentage points from 2010, in line with Nate Silver’s 2012 observation that voter-ID laws tend to decrease participation by approximately 2%.

Voter turnout did not universally decrease across Texas, however. In Cameron and Hidalgo Counties, which, as predominantly Hispanic and Democratic counties, should have experienced decreased turnout according to critics, actually increased, by .4% and 10% respectively. An alternate explanation exists for the general decline in turnout experienced in Texas. It’s possible that in areas where elections are not highly contested, many apathetic voters simply stay home. Whatever the effects of SB 14, with the law’s ultimate fate still unresolved, the debate over voter identification is certain to continue.