Resources

This explainer reviews public attitudes toward voting machines, ballot-marking devices, paper records, and related election technologies and describes how confidence depends not only on actual system security but also on whether voters understand the safeguards protecting registration, voting, and counting.

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

In 2015, the Center for Civic Design outlined six priority areas for improving the usability and accessibility of election systems. This report details progress toward incorporating these priorities into the VVSG 2.0. It also details related efforts by election community stakeholders to implement these priorities.

This paper examines whether correcting information can overcome misperceptions about election fraud. It finds that providing counter information is generally ineffective at remedying misperceptions and can, depending on the source, increase endorsements of misperceptions among Republicans.

This paper finds that media coverage of voter fraud is associated with public beliefs about voter fraud. In states where fraud was more frequently featured in local media outlets, public concerns about voter fraud were heightened. In particular, the paper finds that press attention to voter fraud has a larger influence on Republicans than Democrats and Independents.

This paper finds that the "winner" effect mitigates the effects from strong pre-election cues from elites. It also shows the effect of pre-election attention to the rigging issue.

In this book, authors analyze whether systematic outcomes arise from distinctive election policies in the American states. They establish a cost of voting index to evaluate which states have a higher cost of voting, how this cost impacts who votes, and whether there is a correlation between the cost of voting and minority populations.

This report highlights key trends in voter turnout among voters with disabilities in the 2018 elections. Authors note an increase in turnout among these voters compared to the 2014 midterms. They found that employed voters with disabilities were just as likely to vote as employed voters without disabilities, suggesting a link between employment and political participation.

This research focuses on whether voters’ confidence is shaped by the racial or ethnic representation of poll workers and election staff.

In The Turnout Gap, Fraga provides a comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of racial and ethnic disparities in voter turnout. Examining voting for Whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans from the 1800s to the present, Fraga documents persistent gaps in turnout and shows that elections are increasingly unrepresentative of the wishes of all Americans.

This post-election survey reports on how Americans cast ballots in 2018 and how confident they were that votes were counted accurately.

In this paper, authors find that relocating or eliminating election day polling places affects some voters more than others. Specifically, younger voters and Hispanic voters have lower turnout when reassigned polling places compared to those that were not. These findings bear important implications for voting accessibility among these groups.