Resources

This paper examines the demographic characteristics and professional profiles of election officials in the U.S. They find that, even amidst disruptions in politics and elections, the "typical" local election official remains the same: mid-50s white females earning just under $50,000 a year. They then explore potential reasons for the heavily female makeup of the elections workforce.

Administering Elections provides a digest of contemporary American election administration using a systems perspective. The authors provide insight into the interconnected nature of all components of elections administration, and sheds light on the potential consequences of reforms that fail to account for this.

Study examining what election officials can do to counteract distrust during delays in vote-counting.

Academic paper examining how race and state policies impact voter trust and confience in electoral systems.

In this paper, authors use Orange County, California data to demonstrate efficient audit strategies for many contests and shows how contest selection by discrepancy can reduce workload.

Grimmer and Hersh assert that contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout have negligible effects on election outcomes. They find that election policies have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship. These effects are not the result of countermobilization from political parties.

In this paper, authors analyze access to vote by mail and other voting methods among Native voters. Authors begin by examining the historical, structural inequities in access to mail services on reservations and utilize data on precinct locations, post office locations, drop box locations, and Election Day voting sites to show how limited access to these sites and services adversely impacts Native voters when compared to both rural and urban Arizona voters.

This paper argues state investment in voter education strengthens voter confidence by improving voter experiences and creating a culture of voter education, both of which facilitate transparency in elections.

After discussions with election officials from Los Angeles County, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas, this project used messaging experiments with nearly 8,500 Americans following the 2022 U.S. midterm elections to measure the impact on trust. It found that state and local election officials can be strongly effective at increasing trust in their own state elections.

Using a nationwide survey experiment conducted after the 2018 midterm elections this research shows that exposure to claims of voter fraud reduces confidence in electoral integrity, though not support for democracy itself.

This academic article studies how messages from political elites influence public confidence in elections and acceptance of democratic norms. It is relevant to the dataset because it connects election rules, information environments, or administrative performance to public confidence and perceived legitimacy. For this dataset, it adds evidence on one of the recurring drivers of election trust: experience, information, partisanship, security, or institutional performance.

After discussions with election officials from Los Angeles County, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas, this project used messaging experiments with nearly 8,500 Americans following the 2022 U.S. midterm elections to measure the impact on trust. It found that state and local election officials can be strongly effective at increasing trust in their own state elections.