Resources

Article explaining a study investigating how videos were used to restore voter trust in different locations across the country.

This bibliography curates research on voter trust, voter confidence, election legitimacy, misinformation, and election administration.

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.

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.

This white paper reviews literature related to trust in elections.

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

This research finds that explicit cues about rigged voting machines increase belief in such theories, especially when the cues target the opposing political party. Explicit cues also decrease confidence in elections regardless of the targeted party, but they have no effect on satisfaction with democracy or support for election security funding.

This post-election survey reports on how Americans cast ballots in 2022 and how confident they were that votes were counted accurately.

This research assesses whether messages reinforcing election integrity increased participation in the 2020 election through a large-scale voter mobilization field experiment. California registrants were mailed a letter that described either existing safeguards to prevent vote-by-mail fraud or the ability to track one’s ballot and ensure that it was counted. Analysis of state voter records reveals that neither message increased turnout over a simple election reminder or even no contact.

This research finds even in the absence of elite claims of vote fraud, authors see strong and immediate shifts in mass views. Once the results became clear, those who supported the losing side became significantly less likely to trust that votes were counted correctly or to be satisfied with the election process, while trust and support for the process rose from pre-to post-election for voters on the winning side.