Resources

This analysis shows that the implementation of vote by mail causes a significant decrease in voter confidence in Washington and Colorado. However, this decrease appears to be temporary, disappearing after only a single election cycle.

This survey report 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 explain why the 2020 election became a turning point in public debates over fraud, mail voting, certification, and legitimacy.

Focusing on natural experiments in Texas and Indiana, this research finds that 65-year-olds turned out at nearly the same rate as 64-year-olds, despite the fact that only 65-year-olds could vote absentee without an excuse in these states. Being just old enough to vote no-excuse absentee did not substantially increase Democratic turnout relative to Republican turnout.

This academic article studies how messages from political elites influence public confidence in elections and acceptance of democratic norms.

Report offering solutions on how public information campaigns by state election officials could mitigate polarized trust in election integrity.

This analysis of the Florida general elections of 2016, 2018, and 2020 shows that voters inexperienced with mail voting disproportionately submit ballots that end up rejected due to (1) late arrival at elections offices or (2) signature defects on return envelopes. Inexperienced mail voters are up to three times more likely to have their ballots rejected compared to experienced mail voters.

This MIT Election Data + Science Lab analysis explains the 2020 “blue shift,” where later-counted ballots disproportionately favored Democrats, and why that pattern mattered for public interpretation of results.

All mail voting in Colorado had a positive overall turnout effect of approximately 8 percentage points—translating into an additional 900,000 ballots being cast between 2014 and 2018.

With Maine as a case study, the research shows that, in the past four general elections, over 10% of vote-by-mail ballots arrived at local elections offices either on Election Day itself or one day earlier. Moreover, of the vote-by-mail ballots most vulnerable to postal delivery disruptions, a greater share of them were cast by unaffiliated voters and Democrats than by Republicans.

This post-election survey reports on how Americans cast ballots in 2020 and how confident they were that votes were counted accurately.

The research finds that online voter registration systems in some states have vulnerabilities that allow adversaries to alter or effectively prevent a voter's registration. The analysis additionally finds that ballot tracking systems raise serious privacy questions surrounding ease of access to voter data.

This Berkman Klein Center work analyzes media ecosystems and disinformation narratives around mail voting, voter fraud, and public discourse in the 2020 election. 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 explain why the 2020 election became a turning point in public debates over fraud, mail voting, certification, and legitimacy.