Resources

Partisan actors in the United States have recently politicized trust in election administration. This paper suggests solutions for election officials to rebuild trust in democratic processes.

In this video Paul Gronke, Director of the Elections and Voting Information Center, outlines the results of the 2023 white paper "An Overview: Vote By Mail in the United States." This paper documents the emergence and growth of mail balloting and details the unique administrative arrangements associated with this method of voting, related research and best practices, and areas where there is still more to learn.

Report summarizing ways election officials can use public information campaigns to restore voter trust in election administration.

This working paper evaluates communication strategies—such as voter education, official messaging, corrections, or prebunking—that aim to increase confidence in elections.

This panel explores a new set of conservative principles to build trust in elections.

Overall, 1.5 percent of all primary ballots cast and 1.1 percent of general election ballots cast were rejected across elections from 2012 to 2022 in Washington. There is evidence that voters of color have higher ballot rejection rates than White voters. Self-identifying male voters have slightly higher ballot rejection rates than self-identifying female voters in both primary and general elections. Younger voters have a much higher ballot rejection rate than older voters.

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of absentee/mail voting and early in-person policies between January 2020 (pre-pandemic) and November 2022. This research highlights that most absentee/mail voting policies were not significantly affected by the pandemic. If changes were made to policies for the 2020 election, they reverted to the policy existing prior to the pandemic.

This white paper reviews literature related to trust in elections.

Academic paper examining the use of audits following elections to improve voter confidence.

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.

In this video, Thad Kousser explores the MIT Election Data + Science white paper about communicating with voters to build trust in elections.

This study demonstrates that the level of accessibility of state absentee and mail voting laws as well as their administration have significant effects on voter turnout. The results also reveal that higher performing U.S. Postal Service administration can enhance the impact of absentee and mail voting laws, particularly in states with the most restrictive mail voting laws.