Building Trust in Elections

The field of political science has a rich history of studying trust in elections and the political system.  Unfortunately, until recently, little of this research has directly addressed actions that election officials or policymakers can take to influence election trust.  However, that is rapidly changing.

Research has found three major factors that influence voter trust:

• The winner/loser effect.  The biggest influence on voter trust is who wins elections.  Voters tend to trust elections more when their candidates win; trust declines when their candidates lose.  This factor is outside the control of election officials, but it is important to keep it in mind when taking actions that are within the control of policy and practice.
• The voter experience.  Voters who have had bad experiences voting—long lines, late-arriving mail ballots, surly poll workers, etc.—report less trust in elections.  Thus, creating a positive experience for voters is not only a nice thing to do, but it also improves how people evaluate the election overall
• Trusted voices.  Few voters pay close attention to election administration beyond their direct experience and rely on trusted leaders to help evaluate the process.  Election officials themselves are trusted voices, but so, too, are political and civic leaders.

Even though voter trust can be influenced by factors outside the control of election officials, research has demonstrated the effectiveness of numerous strategies:

• Maintain a good voter experience.  Voters generalize from their own experience to judge how well elections are run overall.  Factors such as wait times, ballot design, and poll worker competence influence how much voters trust elections.
• Communicate directly with the public through the media.  Communicating with the public can be daunting to election officials who were not trained in modern communications.  Fortunately, organizations such as the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence and The Elections Group offer free, evidence-based tools for election officials.
• Conduct facility tours.  Election office tours can be conducted effectively to educate interested voters about the details of election administration.  Research conducted through a partnership between Maricopa County, Arizona and the University of California, San Diego showed that both in-person and virtual tours increased trust in the process among participants.
• Adopt administrative practices that describe the process.  Describing obscure aspects of election administration may increase trust, although the research is in its early stages. Early-stage research suggests that ballot-tracking tools help boost voter confidence in the process.  Experimental studies indicate that voters trust elections when informed of the results of post-election audits.

Election reform is frequently justified to increase trust in elections.  Reforms are often necessary to increase the security, convenience, and accuracy of elections, but research has regularly shown that reforms themselves rarely change the public’s trust in how elections are conducted.  Two major factors are in play here:

• The low salience of election administration.  Election administration is rarely top of mind for Americans.  They may become more interested when there is a major controversy or political parties make them top issues, but these occurrences are rare. An exit poll conducted in 2024 reported that 34% of respondents listed “the state of democracy” as the issue that mattered most in deciding how to vote for president, but the issue, as stated, is too general to associate with any particular election reform issue.
• Partisan lenses.  Because election conduct is low-salience and technical, the mass public relies on trusted political actors for guidance about how to judge changes to how elections are conducted.  If both parties agree to the change, it is unlikely to be noticed by many members of the public.  If the parties disagree, just over half the population will be pleased with the change, while the other half will charge the majority with being unfair.  The result is that hotly contested questions of election administration tend to polarize trust rather than to move it strongly in one direction or the other.

Researchers find that despite the overall public support for voter ID, Republicans are more supportive than Democrats. This is likely because Republican officials are more likely to advocate for voter ID, and because Republicans have different views about the occurrence of fraud compared to Democrats. A comparison of the public’s confidence that their own votes, votes cast in their community, state, and nationwide were counted accurately across states and different types of voter ID policies finds no discernible differences. 

Recent research finds that audits have a positive and tangible impact on voter confidence. Specifically, transparency around how audits are performed, and by whom - independent vs partisan - increases confidence in ballot accuracy. A caveat to this is the winner/loser effect; Democrats were less confident in audits when a Republican won the race, and Republicans were less confident in audits when a Democrat won the race. 

Full hand counts, in which all ballots cast would be accurately counted, could undermine confidence in elections because they would be conducted by humans rather than machines. Evidence from research and practice shows that hand counts are error-prone and costly both in terms of time, staff, and money. 

Research examines whether mail voters who use ballot tracking are more confident their votes were counted accurately, and finds evidence that ballot tracking increases confidence for mail voters. But there seems to be a large segment of the voting population that is not aware this tool is available. 

Starting with partisan observers, research finds that when voters were asked to consider election fairness in a hypothetical scenario in which poll watchers were legally allowed to be present at polling places, they were more likely to say elections are fair. Similar research approaches that focus on the presence of nonpartisan observers have also found a positive impact on voter confidence. 

Waiting in line does have an effect on voter confidence, particularly among those who waited disproportionately longer than other voters - when polls open and polls close. Research from the 2014 midterm elections also found racial disparities in expressed confidence for voters who waited in line more than the median wait time of 20 minutes - with some voters reporting waiting for an hour or more.

There is robust evidence in the research literature that poll workers play a significant role in shaping the voter experience and voter confidence. Trained poll workers are better able to operate voting technology and better serve voters. Voters also reported more positive experiences and greater trust in elections when they shared race/ethnicity with their poll worker. 

There are ballot design vulnerabilities, such as the placement of instructions that “hide” top ballot races, or dual-column candidate placements  - see butterfly ballot - that have resulted in recording votes for candidates for whom voters did not intend to vote, as well as “skipping” top ballot races, which leads to a higher rate of undervotes. Ballot design improvements, or standardization across states, may minimize these vulnerabilities and increase confidence that one’s vote will be recorded accurately. Additionally, in competitive races, minimizing such vulnerabilities reduces the risk of lower confidence in election integrity across one’s state.  

On-the-ground and social media outreach reduces errors when registering to vote and voting by mail, and increased spending on voter communications has a positive impact on confidence in elections, as these communications both educate voters about how to vote as well as how elections are kept secure.