This academic paper focuses on election misinformation, fraud narratives, or public misperceptions and their effects on confidence in U.S. elections. It is relevant because beliefs about fraud and exposure to misleading claims are central mechanisms through which confidence in election outcomes rises or falls. For this dataset, it helps capture the most recent post-2020 trust environment and the continuing effects of election denial, security concerns, and polarization.
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Use our resource library to explore the latest research in the field of election science.
The authors conducted a nationally representative survey of 3,038 eligible voters with 999 self-identifying as disabled. The findings reveal voters with disabilities expressed lower confidence in the accuracy of their votes being counted. Voting by mail instilled greater confidence in voters with disabilities with nearly 12 percent more of them opting for this method. Trust levels varied within disability categories with Democratic respondents with disabilities displaying higher trust in election accuracy.
This paper synthesizes best practices for in-person voting across polling place access, check-in and wait times, polling place layout and design, ballot design, and the voter experience.
This report provides a comprehensive update to the EAC's landmark poll worker reports from 2007 and 2016, based on current data across four key areas: recruitment, training, retention, and evaluation. It captures the significantly transformed landscape of poll worker management since 2020, addressing new challenges like workforce shortages, threats against election workers, and the adoption of emerging technologies. The report also highlights state-by-state practices and emerging best practices from jurisdictions nationwide.
This paper reports opinion or survey evidence about trust, legitimacy, political polarization, and confidence in U.S. elections. It is relevant because it documents how confidence in election results interacts with broader trust in democracy and political institutions. For this dataset, it helps capture the most recent post-2020 trust environment and the continuing effects of election denial, security concerns, and polarization.
This publicly available tool allows election offices to enter the quantities of equipment, materials, and archives they have and receive an estimate of the warehouse space required to store in-person voting materials.
Three experiments about election official messaging are summarized, which:(a) compare the impact of messages conveyed through earned versus paid media; (b) ask whether Americans are more responsive to messages from federal or from state election officials; (c) explore the impact of videos and static visuals.
Article summarizing how election officials can use "prebunking" to increase voter trust and confidence through a comparative analysis of elections in the United States and Brazil.
In this MS thesis, the author investigates how voting equipment type (paper ballots, optical scan, and ballot marking devices) affects voting process performance across three elections at three locations. They use observational time studies and discrete-event simulation to model how different voting systems affect voter wait times, throughput, and overall process efficiency. The author find that performance improvements from adopting newer voting technologies are inconsistent across election contexts.
This Publicly available, interactive tool helps election officials and their IT teams identify, understand, and prioritize cybersecurity solutions for their election operations.
This academic paper examines the administrative practices, official communications, or legal steps that help voters understand and trust election outcomes. It is relevant because trusted, timely, and nonpartisan communication is one of the main tools election officials and civic groups use to counter distrust. For this dataset, it helps capture the most recent post-2020 trust environment and the continuing effects of election denial, security concerns, and polarization.
In this MS thesis, Fry examines the accessibility of in-person voting equipment, specifically Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and Direct Recording Electronics (DREs), across U.S. elections from 2000 to 2024. She uses data from Verified Voting, the U.S. Census Bureau, and BMD/DRE manufacturers to analyze trends in the deployment of accessible equipment and to evaluate current systems against VVSG 2.0 Principle 7 (the right to vote privately and independently). The author finds that although accessible equipment coverage has improved substantially since HAVA, significant gaps remain in meeting current usability and accessibility standards.