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... Lastly, we believe that ideological conservatives will be most susceptible to negative information regarding election interference. This is supported by previous research that finds that conservatives are more susceptible to negative information and more likely to adhere to negative beliefs regarding elections (Bowler et al., 2015;Udani et al., 2018;Pennycook and Rand, 2021;Berlinski et al., 2021). A recent study by Udani et al. (2018) shows that conservatives are most susceptible to hold strong beliefs regarding election fraud when exposed to news coverage on the topic. ...
... Berlinski et al. (2021) confirm these results in an experimental setting. Bowler et al. (2015) further show that perceptions of election fairness are shaped by partisanship. ...
... With that being said, we also expected conservatives to be more influenceable for the negative condition as well. This puts into question the results of previous studies which found conservatives can be highly influenceable by negative information (Bowler et al., 2015;Udani et al., 2018;Pennycook and Rand, 2021;Berlinski et al., 2021). Further research should investigate the role of conservatism in the stability of attitudes towards elections. ...
Article
As a response to foreign election interference efforts, politicians and news media have adopted various frames which highlight the hinderance of such interference in electoral processes. However, little research has examined the impact of the framing of this election interference discourse on the attitudes and behaviours of voters. This research examines the impact of negative and positive election interference frames on Canadian voters using an experimental vignette design. Specifically, this study focuses on three dependent variables: citizens' trust in electoral institutions, their likelihood of voting, and their level of comfort using alternative methods of electoral participation. The results suggest that the framing of information on the topic of election interference can have an important impact on citizens' attitudes toward the electoral process. We find that positive, but not negative, information regarding election interference influences respondents' trust in the electoral system. We also find that the effect is greatest in politically uninterested individuals. Lastly, the results show that conservatives hold more negative attitudes towards elections and voting.
... Bowler et al. 2015;Udani and Kimball 2017). Similarly, Republicans are more supportive of restrictive policies (like photo ID requirements) and more opposed to access-oriented policies (like Election Day registration) than Democrats(Bowler and Donovan 2016;Hale, Montjoy, and Brown 2015;Kropf 2016). ...
... Similarly, Republicans are more supportive of restrictive policies (like photo ID requirements) and more opposed to access-oriented policies (like Election Day registration) than Democrats(Bowler and Donovan 2016;Hale, Montjoy, and Brown 2015;Kropf 2016). In addition, people with higher levels of education and political knowledge, like LEOs, tend to have more positive assessments of the integrity of American elections(Bowler et al. 2015;Wolak 2014;Udani and Kimball 2017). ...
Chapter
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In this chapter, we compare local election officials’ and public opinion on identically worded questions in two national surveys conducted prior to the 2020 election. We examine the values, beliefs, and opinions that local election officials (LEOs) have about election integrity and reform and how their opinions differ from the public at large. We argue that the position of LEOs as “elites” and “experts” in election administration will lead them to have more nuanced and informed opinions about some aspects of the election system. In particular, LEOs believe that voter fraud occurs less frequently than many in the general public, and we think LEOs are closer to the truth on that question. At the same time, the attitudes and beliefs of LEOs share some features with the mass public, particularly when evaluating issues that are at a “distance” from local administration, such as levels of election integrity at the national level and support levels for particular election reforms. Comparing the opinions of LEOs to the general public is important in the current political environment where election officials are often forced to respond to unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
... Examples include whether respondents consider elections in their country as free and fair; how confident they are that their votes are counted correctly; whether election authorities act in a fair manner; whether all parties have a fair chance to present their positions; and whether voting by absentee ballot is considered a secure procedure (cf. Alvarez et al. 2008;Birch 2008;Norris 2014;Bowler et al. 2015;Schmitt-Beck/Faas 2021;Schnaudt 2023aSchnaudt , 2023c. In comparison, expert-based approaches aim to measure the actual quality of elections at the macro or contextual level. ...
... With regard to contextual-level electoral integrity, the picture looks very similar: Whereas some studies considered the actual quality of elections as explanatory factor in their analyses, these studies were interested in outcomes other than voting behavior (cf. Birch 2008;Bowler et al. 2015;Fortin-Rittberger et al. 2017;Flesken/Hartl 2018). ...
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Elections and citizens’ participation in the electoral process are at the heart of representative democracy. In the absence of free and fair elections, citizens lack a meaningful opportunity to take part in the selection of political representatives and, hence, are deprived of an effective means to influence the direction of public policies in their country. Elections and voting thus fulfill an important legitimizing function that is indispensable for the long-term viability of modern democratic systems. Despite its overall relevance for democratic well-being, the nexus between the integrity of the electoral process and citizens’ inclination to participate in elections has been largely overlooked in extant research. Against this background, our study aims to shed new light on how the integrity of the electoral process and individual perceptions about the proper conduct of elections are related to citizens’ voting behavior. In doing so, the study contributes to the extant literature in at least three distinct ways: First, it provides a more comprehensive analysis than previous research by simultaneously considering both individual-level electoral integrity perceptions and countries’ actual, contextual-level electoral integrity as antecedents of individual citizens’ participation in elections. Second, it highlights the micro-macro conditionality of electoral integrity by arguing that the relevance of individual-level electoral integrity perceptions as determinants of citizens’ voting behavior depends on the actual, contextual-level electoral integrity of a country. Third, it offers a more encompassing empirical test than previous studies by analyzing information from 130,000 individual survey respondents from WVS and EVS, covering a total of 75 countries over a period of eleven years (2011-2021). Results show that individual perceptions concerning the proper conduct of elections constitute a decisive factor in citizens’ voting calculus. Second, there is no direct effect of a country’s contextual-level electoral integrity on individual voting behavior. Third, the impact of individual-level electoral integrity perceptions on citizens’ propensity to vote is conditioned by the actual electoral integrity across contexts. Specifically, individual perceptions are more relevant for citizens’ voting calculus when the actual quality of the electoral process is high.
... In Bowler, Brunell, Donovan, and Gronke's (2015) work, they argue that the perception that the results are correct is linked to ensuring that the procedures are viewed as fair, which contributes to the perception of the election results being accurate. One of the factors mentioned in this work regarding what contributes to the acceptance of a system is how the election officials conduct the election and whether voters perceive corruption in the system (Bowler et al., 2015). ...
... In Bowler, Brunell, Donovan, and Gronke's (2015) work, they argue that the perception that the results are correct is linked to ensuring that the procedures are viewed as fair, which contributes to the perception of the election results being accurate. One of the factors mentioned in this work regarding what contributes to the acceptance of a system is how the election officials conduct the election and whether voters perceive corruption in the system (Bowler et al., 2015). The belief that corruption exists highlights the need to research this aspect of elections further and determine what steps can be taken to address it. ...
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Elections are vital to democracy in the United States, as they determine who will lead the government. Election security has become a top priority due to claims of integrity issues, and there is a need for increased security measures due to technological advancements (Bastian et al., 2021; Murphy, 2022). The Socio-Technical Model components of structure, technology, people, and task are believed to be correlated with trust in elections, and this trust is believed to be linked to voters’ intention to vote. A multi mixed-methods study was conducted to investigate these correlations (Venkatesh et al., 2013). The study found that the STM components are indeed related to trust in elections, with the strongest correlation being between technology and trust. Therefore, technical solutions such as homomorphic encryption may be a way to improving election security. The study also found that there was practically no correlation between trust and intention to vote.
... First, and not surprising in a highly partisan and polarized environment, opinions about election fraud are rooted in voter partisanship and in how political parties frame discussions about election fraud (Beaulieu, 2014). Indeed, elite messaging plays an important role in forming public opinions, and shaping polarized partisan views (Bowler et al., 2015;Donovan, 2016, 2024). Relatedly, it makes sense that the same "loser effect" seen in studies of voter confidence will be seen in perceptions of election fraud, with partisans of parties losing recent elections more likely to express concerns about election fraud (Anderson et al., 2005;Sances and Stewart, 2015;Sinclair et al., 2018), and more likely to support electoral reform (Hood and McKee, 2022, 2023, 2024. ...
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What are the opinions of American registered voters about election fraud and types of election fraud as we head into the final stages of the 2024 Presidential election? In this paper we use data from an online national survey of 2,211 U.S. registered voters interviewed between June 26 - July 3, 2024. Respondents were asked how common they thought that ten different types of election fraud might be in the U.S. In our analysis, we show that substantial proportions of U.S. registered voters believe that these types of election fraud are common. Our multivariate analysis shows that partisanship correlates strongly with endorsement of types of election fraud, with Republicans consistently more likely to state that types of election fraud are common, even when we control for a wide variety of other factors. We also find that conspiratorial thinking is strongly correlated with belief in the occurrence of types of election fraud, even when we control for partisanship. Our results reported in this paper provide important data regarding how American registered voters perceive the prevalence of types of election fraud, just months before the 2024 Presidential election.
... Trust in electoral fairness-or a lack thereof-appears in the literature either as a proxy for electoral integrity or as a measure of popular support for democracy and institutions, mainly as a dependent variable (Fortin-Rittberger et al., 2017;Maldonado and Seligson, 2014;Norris, 2022;Rosas, 2010;Zmerli and van der Meer 2017) Trust in electoral institutions and procedures, measured using surveys, can be a good indicator of an electionʼs fairness (Birch, 2008;Bowler et al., 2015). Since it is challenging to directly measure fraud and manipulation, many researchers use votersʼ evaluations as proxies, despite the potential bias of measures based on perceptions. ...
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When do political parties reject electoral results? Even decades after the democratic transition, post-electoral conflicts and protests are still common in many Latin American countries. This article argues that trust in electoral management can predict political competitorsʼ choices between two alternative strategies: defiance or compliance. The present work uses a medium-N research design and a multilevel model to analyze elections in 18 Latin American countries since redemocratization and finds support for the argument that ceteris paribus, distrust in the fairness of elections predicts the defiant reactions of political competitors.
... First, and not surprising in a highly partisan and polarized environment, opinions about election fraud are rooted in voter partisanship and in how political parties frame discussions about election fraud (Beaulieu, 2014). Indeed, elite messaging plays an important role in forming public opinions, and shaping polarized partisan views (Bowler et al., 2015;Donovan, 2016, 2024). Relatedly, it makes sense that the same "loser effect" seen in studies of voter confidence will be seen in perceptions of election fraud, with partisans of parties losing recent elections more likely to express concerns about election fraud (Anderson et al., 2005;Sances and Stewart III, 2015;Sinclair et al., 2018), and more likely to support electoral reform (Hood and McKee, 2022, 2024. ...
Preprint
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What are the opinions of American registered voters about election fraud and types of election fraud as we head into the final stages of the 2024 Presidential election? In this paper we use data from an online national survey of 2,211 U.S. registered voters interviewed between June 26 - July 3, 2024. Respondents were asked how common they thought that ten different types of election fraud might be in the U.S. In our analysis, we show that substantial proportions of U.S. registered voters believe that these types of election fraud are common. Our multivariate analysis shows that partisanship correlates strongly with endorsement of types of election fraud, with Republicans consistently more likely to state that types of election fraud are common, even when we control for a wide variety of other factors. We also find that conspiratorial thinking is strongly correlated with belief in the occurrence of types of election fraud, even when we control for partisanship. Our results reported in this paper provide important data regarding how American registered voters perceive the prevalence of types of election fraud, just months before the 2024 Presidential election.
... At the contextual level, scholars have carefully examined how institutions involved in elections and electoral administration influence citizens' trust attitudes by directly affecting the quality of elections or providing informational cues that can help citizens make sense of the election. Electoral management bodies (EMBs) have received the lion's share of attention in the comparative literature, with several studies indicating that citizens are more likely to regard elections as democratic when EMBs display independence from executive control and effectively run elections (Rosas 2010;Norris 2014;Bowler et al. 2015;Kerr 2024). Research, particularly in the American context, also indicates how citizens' experiences with specific electoral administrative policies and procedures surrounding registration, voting technology, and processes for verifying electoral results through audits also shape their perceptions about the integrity of the electoral process and outcomes (Ansolabehere and Persily 2008;Ansolabehere 2009;Beaulieu 2016;Bowler and Donovan 2016;Stewart, Absolabhehere, and Persily 2016;Bryant 2020;Dalela, Kulyk, and Sch€ urmann 2021). ...
Article
This article introduces a special issue on trust in elections. While the number of electoral democracies has grown globally, we are currently experiencing a crisis of electoral trust. Political polarization, social divisions, and the rapid spread of misinformation have all been related to enhanced widespread skepticism about the quality of national elections. The special issue is focused on two central questions: How can we explain variations in trust in elections at the individual and country levels? How does trust in elections shape political behavior? In the introduction essay, we frame the contributions of the special issue, provide descriptive statistics about trust in elections globally, summarize the current state of the literature, and point to avenues for future research.
... Direct experience is an important source of information for citizens who follow the election campaign and vote, as they are able to directly observe any irregularities, such as long waiting lines at polling stations, ballot shortages, or, more seriously, unbalanced media coverage, voter intimidation, and ballot-box stuffing. Indeed, direct experience with problems in election administration has been shown to affect citizens' perceptions of election integrity in contexts as varied as the United States, South Korea, Southeast Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa (Kerr 2014;Bowler et al. 2015;Cho and Kim 2016;Mochtak et al. 2021). In addition to direct experiences, citizens can also become informed about election integrity through the experiences of others in their social networks. ...
Article
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In this paper, we investigate how trust in traditional and social media correlate with misperceptions of electoral integrity. Relying on insights from political communication research on exposure to misinformation and selective exposure mechanisms, as well as insights on the different roles of traditional and social media in different regime types, we argue that misperceptions of election integrity are likely driven in large part by the interplay between the trust people have in different media sources and the context (i.e., the level of press freedom) in which the elections take place. Using data from a survey conducted in 25 countries across the world, we find that trust in information from traditional media decreases misperceptions, while trust in information from social media increases misperceptions. However, both these effects are smaller when press freedom is restricted. In countries with low levels of press freedom, trust in social media is even associated with lower levels of misperceptions.
... First, the electoral management body (EMB) and its performance in administrating elections are considered crucial determinants of trust in elections. Various facets of EMBs are considered consequential in influencing trust, including their design (Otaola 2018), their degree of independence from the government (Birch 2008;Kerr and L€ uhrmann 2017), their overall administrative performance during elections (Kerr 2013;Bowler et al. 2015), and their localized performance as measured by the level of professionalism of poll workers (Hall et al. 2009) and individual experiences (whether negative or positive) at the polling station (King 2017(King , 2020King and Barnes 2019). ...
Article
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Do Donald Trump’s attacks on voting by mail influence how some Canadians view mail-in ballots? The Trump effect on views and behaviors surrounding voting by mail has been well documented in the United States. North of the border, more Canadians than ever voted by mail in the last general election. In this study, we consider how right-wing populism is associated with trust in voting by mail among Canadians. Specifically, we seek to test two main hypotheses. First, we consider whether Canadians holding populist views—and, in particular, those holding right-wing populist views (would-be Trump supporters)—are less trusting of voting by mail. Second, we consider whether political media exposure amplifies this association. We analyze data from both the 2021 Canadian Election Study and Democracy Checkup Survey. We find that those who hold populist views clearly have less trust in voting by mail. This is especially true among right-leaning individuals. Furthermore, as in the United States, this effect is moderated by one’s level of political media exposure, with higher levels of political media exposure amplifying the effect of populist views on trust in voting by mail. Our findings, therefore, suggest that the politicization of mail-in voting by President Trump has important implications for the legitimacy of the electoral system not only in the United States, but also in Canada and potentially in other parts of the world.
... Past research on electoral integrity has studied the general public's attitudes toward electoral fraud by focusing on institutional and individual variables. For example, administrative performance (Bowler et al. 2015) and the independence of the electoral management body, as well as contextual factors such as countries' levels of democracy and corruption (Birch 2010), explain variations in perceptions of electoral integrity. Moreover, a level playing field for all contestants increases citizens' confidence and supports the idea that institutions follow the rules (Birch 2008). ...
Article
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Why do some voters believe that there is electoral fraud when this belief contradicts the best available evidence? While the literature on public opinion has explored misperceptions’ pervasiveness and the factors that contribute to them in advanced industrial democracies, the present study analyzes motivated reasoning among voters in a young democracy, Mexico. This study highlights the important role that partisanship plays in voters’ likelihood to believe the allegations of electoral fraud in the 2006 presidential election in Mexico, which continues polarizing both political elites and the electorate even today. To understand the mechanisms at work, this research finds that it is not voters lacking information but rather voters with high levels of affective polarization and conspiratorial thinking who are more likely to believe that there was electoral fraud. The study also includes a survey experiment that fact-checked the belief in the alleged electoral fraud. Consistent with motivated reasoning theory, MORENA partisans resisted efforts to reduce their misperception. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the conditions that make some voters hold misperceptions in young democracies.
... Still, while one would expect that citizens' perceptions align somewhat with their experiences or cues, in the U.S. Bowler et al. (2015) show that perceptions bear very little relation to what actually happens during the elections. In fact, a second line of argumentation claims that perceptions are 'internally' created, either affective and deeply irrational based on the general propensity to believe in conspiratorial theories (Edelson et al., 2017) or based on populist attitudes, reflecting beliefs that legitimate sovereignty lies with the people rather than the elites (Norris et al., 2020). ...
Article
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If elections are to perform their legitimizing role, they should not only be objectively free, fair and non-fraudulent, but should also be perceived by the public as such. This paper investigates who perceives elections to be fair and why by contrasting two main logics: one based on the idea that perceptions of election integrity arise from external cues voters get from their environment and a second logic claiming that perceptions are internally created based on attitudes and beliefs. We use original survey data collected in ten countries around the European Elections 2019. We find that perceptions of election fairness are unrelated to country levels of integrity but mainly relate to voters’ status as winners/losers of the elections, attachment to the institutions they elect and populist attitudes. We also find beliefs on fake news influence to weakly mediate the relation between populist attitudes and perceptions of election fairness.
... It has been argued that the existence of de jure autonomy creates an organisational structure that grants EMBs constitutional and formal independence, which insulates the administrative agencies of EMBs so that they can operate at arms-length from executive meddling (Norris, 2015, p. 135). Under this organisational arrangement, and because EMBs are composed of non-partisan electoral commissioners and professionals whose operations are devoid of executive control, they can conduct and announce elections in a timely and satisfactorily manner (Hartlyn, McCoy, & Mustillo, 2008;Rosas, 2010;Bowler, Brunell, Donovan, & Gronke, 2015;Norris, 2015). However, regardless of the level of autonomy, the functional effectiveness and capacity of EMBs ̶ which include human, financial and logistic resources ̶ can also have a debilitating effect by constraining EMBs in conducting and announcing credible and legitimate election results in a timely fashion (see Pastor, 1999;Norris, 2015, p. 133). ...
... Especially given a situation when there is a large group of citizens on the losing side refusing to accept defeat, it could directly challenge the internal cohesion within the local community and contribute to long-term polarization (van der Eijk and Rose 2021, 105). More importantly, scholarship about effects derived from the winner/loser gap in elections have consistently found that the losers are more likely to question the electoral integrity (Anderson et al. 2005;Bowler et al. 2015;Fischer and Sällberg 2020;Flesken and Hartl 2018;Schnaudt 2023), and in turn being more likely to participate in electoral violence (Norris, Frank, and Martinez i Coma 2015;Piazza 2021). ...
Article
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Consultative referendums are becoming more widely used as a way of responding to rising public discontent with the workings of representative democracy. Consequently, consultative referendums have become an integral part of democratic decision-making processes across the world. However, how the population reacts to the referendum outcome is expected to differ among the population as referendums, by design, divides the participants into winners and losers. In turn, creating a winner-loser gap with potentially polarizing societal consequences. This study therefore seeks to explore how this winner-loser gap is associated with several types of referendum attitudes following the outcome of a local referendum. Using survey data (N = 3113) gathered after a high stakes local referendum in Finland, the more explicit research purpose is therefore to analyze how individual-level opinions about referendums, turnout thresholds and margin of victory thresholds are related to the winner-loser gap. Additionally, we also control for whether these associations are moderated by external efficacy and political trust. The results clearly imply that the winner-loser gap have consequences for several types of referendum attitudes, contributing to scholarship about the effects derived from the winner-loser gap.
... Free and competitive elections are the cornerstone of democratic systems and encapsulate the notion of electoral fairness (Dahl 1971(Dahl , 1989König et al. 2022;Linz and Stepan 1996a,b;Przeworski 1991). Though electoral integrity rests on a series of well-defined requirements (Birch 2011;van Ham 2014;Norris 2014Norris , 2015Norris et al. 2014;Schedler 2002), scholars generally agree that the concept of "fairness" is a crucial qualitative judgment that voters are in a position to make beyond these stricter definitions (Bowler et al. 2015;Mattes and Bratton 2007;Mauk 2020;McAllister and White 2011;Moehler 2009;Norris 2019). In this context, several researchers have examined the conditions under which the conduct of elections is likely to be perceived as fair and either engenders public confidence or, to the contrary, leads citizens to question the legitimacy of the electoral process (Birch 2008;Nadeau and Blais 1993;Norris 2017;Werner and Marien 2022). ...
Book
Satisfaction with democracy is a vastly studied research topic. In this Element, the authors aim to make sense of this context by showing that elections (electoral processes and outcomes) influence citizens' satisfaction with democracy in different ways according to the quality of a democratic regime. To do so, they leverage the datasets from the Comparative Study on Electoral Systems (CSES) and uphold the belief that social scientists must take advantage of the increased availability of rich comparative datasets. The Element concludes that elections do not only have different impacts on citizens' satisfaction with democracy based on the quality of the democratic regime that they live in, but that the nature of the meaning attributed to electoral processes and outcomes varies between emergent and established democracies.
... 348-349). Previous studies have focused on assessments by independent election observers (Hyde, 2011;Roussias and Ruiz-Rufino, 2018), electoral officials and practitioners (Garnett and James, 2021), election agents of political candidates (Fisher and Sällberg, 2020), poll workers (Partheymüller et al., 2022), country experts Martínez i Coma and van Ham, 2015), and ordinary citizens (Birch, 2008;Bowler et al., 2015;Coffé, 2017;Garnett, 2019;Schnaudt, 2023a). While these studies have made substantial headway in illuminating our understanding concerning the quality of elections as well as the causes and consequences of electoral-integrity beliefs, they have thus far completely neglected the perspective and perceptions of political elites (for a notable exception, see Rosas, 2010). 2 In light of recent developments in many advanced democracies, with political elites increasingly relying on rhetoric that questions the fairness and integrity of democratic elections (Norris et al., 2020;Schmitt-Beck and Faas, 2021;Fogarty et al., 2022), this omission in the scholarly debate is not only inimical to an encompassing understanding of electoral integrity as such. ...
Article
Elections in many democracies have come under attack "from within", with political elites challenging the integrity of the electoral process and calling its outcomes into question. Such allegations may delegitimize democratic outcomes and compromise citizens' confidence in elections. Yet aside from their rhetoric, little is known about political elites' electoral-integrity beliefs. This study breaks new ground by investigating how political elites perceive the integrity of elections, and which factors may account for differences in their electoral-integrity beliefs. Using innovative data from the 2021 candidate survey of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), the empirical analysis shows that political candidates exhibit mostly positive views about the integrity of the electoral procedures and the 2021 election, while being more skeptical about the fairness of the campaign period. Moreover, the findings show that negative campaign experiences, an affiliation with a populist political party, and electoral defeat are important drivers of candidates' skepticism about the integrity of elections. These findings provide novel insights on the nature, background, and diagnostic significance of political elites' electoral-integrity beliefs in modern democracies.
... These long queues have also been reported on by the media and the Swedish Election Authority. Previous studies have found that long queues affect voter turnout and other aspects of elections negatively (e.g., Alvarez et al. 2009;Bowler et al. 2015), so this problem must be prioritised and then solved. The new rule that voters should be alone behind a ballot stand when they collect their ballot papers (to ensure a secret ballot) is probably the main reason for the long queues. ...
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In democracies, elections in which voters elect their leaders and hold them accountable are the most important part of the democratic process. This study is about the people who work on the frontline of democracy and who play a major role in elections, namely poll workers. Surprisingly little is known about how poll workers evaluate elections, and we provide a detailed analysis of poll workers' views of how elections work in Sweden. We do this by reporting and analysing the results from a survey conducted among poll workers in Sweden shortly after the 2022 election. The results show that although many types of polling station-related problems were rare, some problems occurred to a greater extent than we expected. It is also clear that many of the problems had a negative impact on the poll workers' evaluations of the quality of the voting process.
... This is supported in the existing literature. For example, Lundmark et al. (2020) find that when a regional election in Sweden in 2010 had to be rerun due to mistakes in the vote handling, citizens' confidence in the election authority decreased, and it had a spill-over negative effect on citizens' satisfaction with democracy (see also for example Bowler et al. 2015;Garnett 2019;Norris 2019). ...
... uring legitimacy of the electoral process and outcomes. Subverting faith and trust in elections undermine the foundations of democracy. Research has shown that technical improvements to electoral administration can improve voter perceptions of elections being fair, but that there are limits to what election administration reforms alone can achieve (Bowler et. al 2015). As we prepare for the 2022 Midterm Elections and increasingly contested elections and election outcomes, one approach to addressing perceptions of legitimacy and trust is to incorporate election administration in civic learning curriculum and campus-wide initiatives. Furthermore, engaging young people in election administration can ser ...
... Political awareness can take the form of cues driven by party elites or heuristics that facilitate their decisions. As with perceptions of voter ID laws and fair elections more generally (Ansolabehere and Persily 2007;Bowler et al. 2015), partisanship may color how voters processed the president's statements on mail-in voting. Stripped to its core, motivated reasoning can move individuals, particularly those who are politically aware, toward their own party's framing of an issue. ...
Article
Might elite cues affect how we vote? Extant literature focuses on effects of elite cues on candidate evaluation or policy preference, but we know little about how they might affect vote method preferences. Drawing on a large survey of validated Florida voters, including those who regularly vote by mail, we find that retrospective and prospective misreporting of vote method prior to the 2020 General Election was driven primarily by support for Trump. The president’s supporters who were most politically aware were most likely to disavow their own voting by mail and misreport their anticipated vote method in the November election. Understanding the effects—and limits—of elite cues on the politicization of self-reported political behavior has important implications for pollsters and campaigns, election administrators, voters, and the broader democratic electoral process.
... The body of empirical work on the correlates of attitudes toward voter ID laws needs additional development. Though some literature has examined the effects of voter ID laws on public trust in elections (e.g., Bowler et al., 2015;Bowler & Donovan, 2016;Valentino & Neuner, 2017), few studies have explored the social sources of support for these policies, which is rather high among the U.S. public (Kane & Wilson, 2021). However, some research has revealed that racial resentment and implicit racial bias are associated with attitudes favorable toward voter ID laws, especially among White individuals (Banks & Hicks, 2016;Wilson et al., 2014;Wilson & Brewer, 2013). ...
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Much scholarship has discussed how the expansion of the carceral state in the U.S. has consequences for other facets of the democracy. Specifically, felony disenfranchisement laws create a class of “carceral citizens” comprised disproportionately of racially minoritized individuals, and voter ID laws likewise closely mirror racialized segregation efforts that parallel the effects of justice system policies. Despite these clear theoretical linkages, little research has examined whether the anti-welfarism, anti-immigrant attitudes, and symbolic racism which fuel public punitiveness similarly increase support for voting restrictions. Further, it is unknown whether punitiveness itself intervenes in these relationships. Analyses of data from the 2020 American National Election Survey (N = 7,453) reveal considerable overlap between the sources of both punitiveness and voting restriction policies, and punitiveness sets an indirect path through which these social sensibilities influence support for voting restrictions. Further, party-specific analyses reveal that these associations generally are stronger for Democrats than Republicans.
... Casi toda la literatura referida hasta ahora en este artículo intenta explicar la pregunta sobre si la elección fue "limpia" o "justa y limpia". Esta variable se mide después de una elección, está a nivel de persona, su connotación cronológica es muy precisa y, fuera de la hipótesis de la disonancia cognitiva, se maneja un puñado de explicaciones como los factores del contexto político (polarización, competitividad, volatilidad), la raza y las variables socioeconómicas (Alvarez et al., 2008;Dowling et al., 2019), la forma en que mecánicamente se lleva a cabo el voto y el conteo (Bowler et al., 2015;Llewellyn et al., 2009), todos elementos de la arquitectura del Estado: ser presidencialista/ parlamentario, el rol de los tribunales y el grado de independencia del aparato electoral (Caballero, 2019). ...
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México tiene un sistema electoral mayormente robusto, aun así, la población suele sospechar fraudes. Este artículo propone que la desconfianza electoral podría también relacionarse con una mala opinión acerca del candidato ganador. Con modelos de regresión múltiple se muestra que la opinión que se tiene de él se relaciona con la confianza en la elección, independientemente de si se votó por quien ganó o perdió. Además, la evaluación del presidente parece relacionarse con la confianza en el instituto electoral. Estos análisis apoyan la idea de que cuando la ciudadanía ve ganar a un mal candidato o que lo juzga como tal, podría creer que el sistema electoral está fallando.
... Further studies have examined how various macro-level aspects of the election administration shape micro-level perceptions of electoral integrity among the electorate. This research has shown, for instance, that voters perceive elections as less fair when administrative performance is low (Bowler et al., 2015) and that citizens are less satisfied with democracy when facing high levels of electoral fraud (Fortin-Rittberger et al., 2017). Likewise, electoral maladministration has been linked to a short-term decrease in trust in electoral authorities and satisfaction with democracy (Lundmark et al., 2020). ...
Article
In recent years, election administration has become a subject of intensified debates, raising questions of how to organize elections to ensure electoral integrity. One question concerns who should serve as members of polling station boards, administer election day proceedings, and participate in the vote count. Different models co-exist in modern democracies, with some countries – among them Austria – actively involving the political parties in the election administration. Against this background, this paper examines perceptions of electoral integrity among Austrian poll workers and citizens using data from an original survey of poll workers and survey data of the voting population. The results show that poll workers have greater confidence in the election administration than regular voters but are equally or more skeptical regarding other aspects of electoral integrity. Also, their partisan background shapes perceptions of electoral integrity. To conclude, we discuss the benefits and limitations of the ‘party model’ for poll worker recruitment.
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Under 2000-talet har det blivit vanligare att ifrågasätta och ibland förneka valresultat. I detta kapitel diskuterar statsvetaren Magnus Hagevi och Anna Nyqvist, kanslichef på Valmyndigheten, bland annat forskning om vilka som inte uppfattade att de svenska riksdagsvalen 2018 och 2022 gick korrekt till.
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This chapter examines the role of elected officials in administering America’s elections. After exploring the historical roots of directly electing local election officials and recent trends in election administration, we detail the responsibilities these officials hold, where and how they are elected, and the descriptive characteristics of those who are elected. We use comprehensive original data on local election administration in the United States as well as the 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials to shed light on the ever-important local level of U.S. election administration. We focus on six dimensions of election administration: the degree of uniformity within states, the number and type of independent election administration authorities, the geographic level of responsibility, the selection method, and the partisan nature of these offices. These dimensions are mapped between states and jurisdictions as well as over time, providing a complete picture of local election administration in the United States. We conclude by tackling the tricky question of whether election officials should be elected.
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Resumo Qual o papel da Justiça Eleitoral na condução das eleições? Esta pergunta orientou vários trabalhos sobre o período democrático atual. Entretanto, o conhecimento sobre a fase inicial da Justiça Eleitoral é quase que inexistente. Este artigo constitui uma tentativa preliminar de elucidar os “primeiros passos” da Justiça Eleitoral na condução da eleição de 1933. Partindo de um arcabouço analítico centrado em quatro aspectos – organização da eleição, imparcialidade, independência e rule-making –, e por meio de um levantamento de dados inéditos em jornais e fontes oficiais, o estudo revela que em 1932 a Justiça Eleitoral apresentava 1) um elevado comprometimento nos aspectos organizacionais, ainda que atuasse em condições de 2) relativa parcialidade, sobretudo no âmbito administrativo local. O artigo conclui propondo que o tema da democratização no Brasil deva ir além das dimensões clássicas discutidas pela literatura (sufrágio, voto secreto, competição política) e passe a incorporar o papel da Justiça Eleitoral, contribuindo para a construção de uma agenda de pesquisa em torno deste ramo especializado do Poder Judiciário.
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Are partisans more likely to endorse political violence when politicians accuse their rivals of election improprieties? I theorize that for Republican partisans in the United States, the answer to this question is yes. Republican partisans are primed to believe allegations of cheating by Democrats and view election improprieties through the lens of racial and xenophobic resentments. Allegations of Democratic election fraud prompt them to eschew nonviolent norms of political behavior and endorse political violence. I test these propositions using an original, online survey experiment involving 140 self-identified Republican subjects. I find that exposure to allegations by politicians that Democrats engage in election fraud prompts Republican partisans to increase their support for political violence. Furthermore, using mediation tests, I find that exposing Republicans to allegations of electoral fraud by Democrats reduces their trust of people of different races and religions which, in turn, increases their support for political violence.
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Proponents of restrictive voting policies argue that they are necessary to reduce fraud beliefs and instill confidence in elections. However, recent scholarship examining this dynamic in the United States finds that the effects of voting restrictions on fraud beliefs and voter confidence differ by party, suggesting the extent to which fraud beliefs undergird this relationship may also differ by party. Whether voter fraud beliefs tie voter restrictions to voter confidence is inherently important given the assumed role of voter fraud beliefs and voter restrictions in increasing voter confidence, an issue well highlighted in the 2020 election. This study contributes to this literature by measuring the extent to which voter fraud beliefs undergird the relationship between restrictive election policies and voter confidence among Republicans and Democrats. Findings suggest that voter fraud beliefs play a significant and substantive mediating role for Republicans but not Democrats, in line with prominent theories arguing that partisan elite signaling colors electoral reform perceptions.
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In Crawford v. Marion County (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that voter identification requirements are lawful on the grounds that, even if they do not prevent fraud, they can instill confidence in voting. However, this reasoning ignores the historical and contemporary racial biases in the enactment and administration of restrictive voting policies in the United States. This legacy likely colors the extent to which Black and white voters see reforms as deterring fraud versus increasing suppression, and as such, how confident they are in election outcomes. We examine how increasing voter restrictions affects voter fraud beliefs and voter confidence among Black and white voters. We find that the enactment of restrictive policies decreases fraud beliefs among white voters but has no effect on fraud beliefs for Black voters; however, Black voters are less confident in elections when conducted with more restrictive policies while white voters are not. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that the racial gap in the effects of restrictive voting policies on voter confidence is partially undergirded by racial elite signaling.
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A growing body of research indicates that voters’ perceptions of the electoral system change when the means of administering elections change. As some electoral jurisdictions have moved to systems designed to increase voter convenience, little is known about whether convenience is achieved at the expense of confidence. Utah’s rollout of Vote by Mail (VBM) occurred county by county across five federal elections, and the three most populous counties adopted all VBM elections successively in 2014, 2016, and 2018. This meaningful variance in voter experience with VBM allows us to model the relationship between experience with VBM and voter confidence. We find that the switch to a more convenient system of voting came at the expense of diminished confidence in the voting process. However, experience with VBM is positively related to confidence such that the loss in confidence can be recouped over time. To capture this dynamic relative to other factors, we also estimate the effects of partisanship and the messages of political elites. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the effect of partisanship on voter confidence changed compared to just two years earlier. Elite messages appear to be especially negative for Trump voters after 2020. More experience with VBM acts as a bulwark against those negative messages, almost completely attenuating the negative effects of Trump’s fraud claims among his voters with the highest levels of VBM experience.
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Poll watchers play an increasingly visible role in American elections, yet there is little research into how their presence shapes beliefs about electoral integrity. On the one hand, poll watchers—like other election observers—may lead voters to be more trusting in elections. On the other hand, poll watchers who expressly represent political parties may contribute to polarized views of electoral integrity. We address this gap with two conjoint experiments and one vignette experiment administered on large national samples. The conjoint experiments vary several features of election polling locations, including the presence of poll watchers, voter identification requirements, and other election regulations. We find that regulations around poll watchers shape views of election fairness, but that the nature of this influence depends on the type and partisanship of poll watchers who are present. The vignette experiment shows that perceptions of poll watchers decline when these individuals act in bad faith; effects are especially large for Republican respondents. These findings help identify the potential that poll watchers have to shape Americans’ beliefs about election fairness and integrity.
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Conventional wisdom says vote buying undermines trust in elections, but few have examined this systematically. We identify why this relationship ought to hold, on average. We also derive two conditioning hypotheses: vote buying will be less consequential among citizens who view these exchanges as positive and in contexts marred by electoral irregularities. We test these three expectations with analyses of cross-national survey data and an original survey experiment. We find only a small and inconsistent relationship between vote buying and electoral trust. We find weak evidence on the role of norms and more support for the notion that context matters. We conclude that a modest connection between vote buying and electoral trust is driven less by approval of vote buying practices and more by variation in how elections are actually conducted and, related, the relative novelty of being exposed to vote buying.
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Ensuring inclusivity and fairness within the electoral process is essential for upholding the foundational principles of democracy. The present investigation is centered on examining the accessibility of polling locations in the state of Iowa, with a specific focus on individuals with disabilities, during the electoral events of 2024. Notwithstanding the existence of legal mandates stipulating accessibility standards, obstacles endure, impacting voter participation and involvement. Employing a spatial analysis methodology, this scholarly inquiry endeavors to evaluate the dispersion and attributes of operational polling sites in Iowa, thereby illuminating potential discrepancies and avenues for enhancement.
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Hingga saat ini, dualisme kelembagaan lembaga pengawas pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh masih terjadi. Kondisi tersebut masih menyisakan masalah dalam pelaksanaan pengawasan pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh. Artikel ini memfokuskan bahasan pada aspek pilihan kebijakan hukum yang dapat diambil untuk menyelesaikan dualisme tersebut. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian hukum normatif yang sepenuhnya menggunakan data sekunder berupa bahan hukum primer dan sekunder. Kajian ini berkesimpulan bahwa akar persoalan dualisme lembaga pengawas pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh disebabkan tidak sinkronnya pengaturan UU Pemilu dan UU Pilkada dengan UU Pemerintahan Aceh. Hal itu juga diperkuat dengan Putusan MK yang menyatakan Pasal 557 dan Pasal 571 huruf d UU Pemilu bertentangan dengan UUD 1945 karena pembentukannya tidak sesuai dengan ketentuan perubahan UU Pemerintahan Aceh yang dimuat dalam UU Pemerintahan Aceh itu sendiri. Penelitian ini merekomendasikan agar dualisme kelembagaan lembaga pengawas pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh segera diakhiri melakukan perubahan terhadap UU Pemilu, UU Pilkada dan UU Pemerintahan Aceh
Chapter
To protect voters from the COVID-19 pandemic, polling places were outfitted with a myriad of policies aimed at limiting COVID-19 spread, including socially distanced voting, routinely cleaning voting booths, and poll workers wearing facemasks. These policies had the potential not only to increase voter safety, but also to increase how long it took a voter cast their ballot and their evaluations of voting. As such, this chapter argues these policies may represent a tradeoff for election officials: the same policies that increase wait times, something election officials want to avoid, also increase voter evaluations of the voting process, something election officials may desire. Examining six different policies, I find evidence that only socially distanced voting and cleaning voting booths represent such a tradeoff, protective barriers and hand sanitizer increase evaluations but not wait times, face masks have no effect on any outcome, and single use ballot pens decrease wait times while increasing voter evaluations. These results provide election officials with much needed information on proper protective policies that can be used to inform future safety strategies for in-person voting.
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American elections rely upon an army of citizen poll workers for their administration. Before and on Election Day, poll workers serve on the front lines of democracy, interacting with the public, and undertaking tasks vital to the electoral process. While crucial to the delivery of free and fair elections, poll workers are increasingly in short supply. The environment surrounding the 2020 general election introduced new challenges to the recruitment and retention of an adequate election workforce. While warnings about how the dual crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic and election denialism would result in wide sweeping problems, the election faced relatively few administrative problems. This success is due largely to the thousands of Americans who confronted threats to their health and safety and staffed the nation’s polling places. In this chapter, we explore what motivated individuals in Miami-Dade County, Florida to serve as poll workers during the November 2020 election.
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This paper examines how individual-level partisanship and state-level factors affect perceptions of electoral integrity in the United States. We find that evaluations of the integrity of the 2020 US presidential election national outcome were only modestly conditioned by the quality of election administration in a person’s state. Perceptions of electoral legitimacy were much more substantially conditioned by motivated reasoning associated with a person’s partisanship, the partisan context Republicans resided in, and Republican partisans’ residence in a swing-state where final results from 2020 were delayed due to late-counted ballots. Overall, estimated effects of the quality of election administration on confidence in elections are null or modest. Partisan factors associated with Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 US presidential election were the strongest forces predicting lack of confidence in US elections and perceptions that election officials were altering results. These factors were not evident in 2016. We discuss how these findings may reflect a fundamental alteration of attitudes among Republican voters and elites about the legitimacy of democratic elections in the US, rather than reflecting cyclical variation in partisan confidence associated with which party won the past election.
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Numerous polls show most Republicans view the 2020 election as illegitimate, but we know relatively little about legitimacy perceptions among losing candidates’ supporters in past elections. I analyze 76 polls asking about the legitimacy of the 2000, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections. Even before 2020, the losing candidate’s supporters are much less likely to view the outcome as legitimate. Losers are about 60 percentage points less likely to accept the election in 2000, about 40 points less likely in 2016, and about 70 points less likely in 2020. Perceptions of legitimacy are typically higher than confidence in election results, and many voters express doubts about the vote count while still accepting the legitimacy of the result.
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This article describes the concept of electoral integrity, how it developed from previous ideas in the literature, so as discusses some methodological alternatives for its measurement. Additionally, it presents electoral integrity in close connection to the debate on electoral governance institutions, while incorporating political actors in the analyses. Furthermore, the article uses examples from Latin America to demonstrate the limits of perceptions data as measures of electoral integrity. As surveys to experts and voters show divergent perceptions, survey researchers and participants must consider its consequences.
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This paper presents the results of the comparative analysis on the level of meeting the standards in the electoral processes held in the countries of the Western Balkans. The analysis is based on the evaluations published for the Election Integrity Perception Index, for elections held in the period 2011-2021. Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Kosovo are classified in countries that belong to the "Moderate" category in helding elections according to the requirements of democratic standards. BiH, North Macedonia are classified at the level "Very low" and "Low", respectively. The election campaign and its financing is the main challenge faced by all the countries of the Western Balkans. Except for Albania, which is classified in the group of countries with a "moderate" level, the perception of the role of the media in the election campaign in other countries of the Western Balkans is negative, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia "Very low", BiH and Montenegro "Low" . All the countries of this region, in particular BiH, North Macedonia and Serbia, should be committed to improve the electoral legislation and the list of voters. Among the countries of this region, there are significant differences in relation to the quality of administration of electoral processes by electoral authorities. Received: 6 October 2022 / Accepted: 12 November 2022 / Published: 18 November 2022
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El Brexit ha sido analizado desde diferentes perspectivas, pero las percepciones sobrela salud no han sido plenamente examinadas. Me centro en la salud porque la campaña pro-Brexitafi rmó que, si el Brexit triunfaba, el Reino Unido no tendría que pagar 350 millones de librassemanalmente a la Unión Europea (UE) y este dinero podría ser destinado al Servicio Nacionalde Salud. Como la mitad de los británicos creyó esta afi rmación, mi pregunta de investigaciónes: ¿desempeñaron las percepciones sobre la salud un papel en el resultado del referéndum delBrexit? Mi hipótesis es que los individuos con peores percepciones de salud fueron más propensosa votar a favor de la salida, ya que pensaban que se benefi ciarían de una sanidad mejor fi nanciada.Después de realizar ciertos análisis estadísticos, concluyo que dichas percepciones fueron unfactor signifi cativo en el voto pro-Brexit, incluso cuando se controla por las percepciones acercade la inmigración.
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The results of a comparative analysis based on the Electoral Integrity Index, evaluated for the period 2011–2021 in the Balkan countries are this paper’s objectives. Referring to perceptions of the level of fulfillment of international standards for democratic elections (PEI), the Balkan region is classified in the group of countries belonging to the “Moderate” category. In the Balkan countries, the positive relationship between the electoral process and the development of liberal democracy is evident, while the level of corruption is a factor that has a significant effect on the electoral process. Clusters analysis performed using estimates of distances between indicators related to the electoral process, the development of a liberal democracy, general economic development and the level of corruption present significant distances. The development of liberal democracy in Balkan countries is conditioned by the level of realization of synergy in the interaction between different factors. This paper aims to identify the legal framework in the details of Balkan countries related to electoral reform, going through recommendations through comparison and quantitative methodology and bringing Czech legislative dimension as a smart solution of problems that countries face in the electoral process.
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Clientelism is a multifaceted phenomenon found in widely differing economic, political, and cultural contexts. Yet, dominant narratives treat clientelism as a symptom of under-development, with modernization as the antidote. As a result, less is known about how formal institutions affect clientelism. This article integrates research on clientelism and electoral integrity. We theorize that as the capacity of electoral management bodies (EMBs) increases, the costs of vote-buying increase for voters, parties, and candidates. We conduct a large-N plausibility probe of our theory using V-Dem data, covering more than 160 countries from 1900 to 2019, as well as several alternative measures. We find a robust negative association between EMB capacity and vote-buying at the country level across a range of model specifications. This supports the plausibility of our theory and paves the way for future research on causal mechanisms and the role of institutions in mitigating clientelism more generally.
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Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of representative democracy. In recent years, however, elections in many advanced democracies have increasingly come under attack by populist actors and rhetoric questioning the integrity of the electoral process. While scholarly attention has so far largely focused on expert surveys measuring and documenting the objective integrity of different elections, a thorough understanding of citizens’ electoral-integrity beliefs and their implications for political behavior is still lacking. Against this background, the present study investigates the impact of electoral-integrity beliefs on citizens’ political behavior in Germany. Specifically, the study aims to assess the influence of electoral-integrity perceptions on turnout, vote choice, and nonelectoral (institutionalized and noninstitutionalized) political participation in the offline and online spheres. The study’s preregistered empirical analysis based on the preelection survey of the 2021 German Longitudinal Election Study shows that electoral-integrity beliefs entail clear implications for citizens’ turnout and vote choice, while their influence on nonelectoral behavior is contingent upon the specific type and sphere of political participation. These findings provide novel insights on the behavioral implications of electoral-integrity beliefs and extend the (scarce) findings of previous research to (1) a broader political action repertoire as well as (2) the German context. The empirical evidence generated comes with far-reaching implications for the general viability of modern democracies, suggesting that the nexus between electoral-integrity beliefs and political behavior can be a “triple penalty” or a “double corrective” for representative democracy.
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How do we ensure a statewide voter registration database’s accuracy and integrity, especially when the database depends on aggregating decentralized, sub-state data with different list maintenance practices? We develop a Bayesian multivariate multilevel model to account for correlated patterns of change over time in multiple response variables, and label statewide anomalies using deviations from model predictions. We apply our model to California’s 22 million registered voters, using 25 snapshots from the 2020 presidential election. We estimate countywide change rates for multiple response variables such as changes in voter’s partisan affiliation and jointly model these changes. The model outperforms a simple interquartile range (IQR) detection when tested with synthetic data. This is a proof-of-concept that demonstrates the utility of the Bayesian methodology, as despite the heterogeneity in list maintenance practices, a principled, statistical approach is useful. At the county level, the total numbers of anomalies are positively correlated with the average election cost per registered voter between 2017 and 2019. Given the recent efforts to modernize and secure voter list maintenance procedures in the For the People Act of 2021 , we argue that checking whether counties or municipalities are behaving similarly at the state level is also an essential step in ensuring electoral integrity.
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Previous research indicates that supporting a winning party in an election boosts satisfaction with democracy, but does not fully or adequately test the mechanisms behind this relationship. Using original survey data, we make a contribution on three fronts. First, we inquire what winning (or losing) an election really means in terms of the performance of one’s preferred party. Second, we employ panel data, which helps to determine whether an election outcome truly impacts satisfaction levels. Third, we examine the breadth of electoral victory, testing whether the satisfaction boost from a regional victory extends to the national and supranational levels. Findings indicate that the inclusion of one’s selected party in government is the most important factor for satisfaction with democracy, which attests to the importance of policy considerations in engendering satisfaction. In addition, winning a regional election strengthens satisfaction beyond the regional level, which indicates that the mere experience of being a “winner” also works to increase satisfaction.
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Elections are sometimes seen as legitimizing institutions, promoting system-level support among citizens by allowing them to have input into the political process. However, prior research has found that this is less true among supporters of losing candidates, who often exhibit lower levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy. We analyze NES survey data from 1964 to 2004, as well as surveys from Florida and the nation following the controversial presidential election of 2000, and find that (1) losers exhibit lower levels of political trust, satisfaction with democracy, confidence that government is responsive to citizens, and in early 2001 were less inclined to extend legitimacy to the newly elected president; (2) losers also are more likely to endorse “rationalizations” as explanations of the election outcome, to be less satisfied with the choice of candidates offered in the election, and to perceive the electoral process as unfair; and (3) voter interpretations of the election mediate the relationships between winning/losing on the one hand, and trust, responsiveness, and satisfaction with democracy on the other. These findings suggest that the so-called legitimizing function of elections is far from a universal phenomenon.
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This article offers the beginnings of a methodology for assessing the quality of a national election, its freeness, fairness and administrative efficacy. The historical lack of a comprehensive framework of analysis has compelled election observers to make pronouncements on the basis of incomplete evidence, usually gathered on the day of the vote and count. It has allowed international observation missions to ‘call’ the results of elections on the basis of political expediency rather than the facts of the case. The intent in this article is not to offer a foolproof method for categorizing election quality but rather to lay out a framework which we believe is more comprehensive and meaningful than anything that has come before. To illustrate its workings the article scores six multi-party elections: two in established democracies – Australia and Denmark 2001– and four in fledgling democracies – South Africa 1994 and 2004, East Timor 2001 and Zimbabwe 2002. The framework outlined here will make it possible to identify patterns of success and failure in the fairness of elections. It should enable all kinds of observers from academics and election administrators to election observers to spotlight the weak areas of election administration, where a government might then choose to focus its efforts to improve the quality of subsequent elections.
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This study assesses how the mass public reasons about political institutions by examining the effects of winning and losing on support for several electoral reform proposals. The national sample survey identified majorities supporting proposals for major changes in America's electoral institutions, and that suggested electoral losses may have a modest effect in reducing losers' satisfaction with how democracy works. Random assignment experiments that tested hypotheses derived from theories of risk perception were conducted. It was found that people who saw themselves as winners and losers in the electoral arena reasoned differently when proposals for change were framed in terms of loss. Losers may be just slightly more supportive than winners of some electoral reforms; however, they appeared less sensitive than winners to framing effects that presented reform proposals in terms of the risks of loss. Winners may support the same reform proposals but their support for change decreased more when the proposals were framed as a potential loss. Winners are thus risk aversive when evaluating electoral reform proposals, while losers may even be risk seeking. Although this survey found support for major reforms, the patterns of reasoning that were identified in the mass public suggest a basis for the stability of electoral institutions.
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Why is turnout higher in some countries and/or in some elections than in others? Why does it increase or decrease over time? To address these questions, I start with the pioneer studies of Powell and Jackman and then review more recent research. This essay seeks to establish which propositions about the causes of variations in turnout are consistently supported by empirical evidence and which ones remain ambiguous. I point out some enigmas and gaps in the field and suggest directions for future research. Most of the research pertains to established democracies, but analyses of nonestablished democracies are also included here.
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Political efficacy and trust—among the most frequently used survey measures of general political attitudes—are often maligned for their lack of reliability and validity. This paper reports results from the National Election Studies 1987 pilot study, which included more than thirty-five efficacy and trust items. Five attitudinal dimensions were hypothesized; four emerged clearly. One scale, internal efficacy, is especially robust; a four- to six-item scale represents a considerable improvement on existing NES measures. External efficacy is distinguished from political trust, at least when the former is measured in terms of the fairness of political procedures and outcomes rather than in terms of elite responsiveness to popular demands. Though less decisive, there also is support for dividing trust into incumbent- and regime-based components. The failure to find a similar incumbent- and regime-based distinction for external efficacy is in accord with theoretical perspectives.
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© 2003 Cambridge University Press Attitudes towards the political system have often been assumed to be stable attributes that are not easily influenced by short-term forces. We examine the extent to which attention to media coverage, campaign activity and electoral outcomes can mobilize support for the political system in the context of an election campaign. Using pre-election and post-election survey panels from the United States, Britain and New Zealand, we find only small shifts in aggregate measures of system support. However, we find that there are significant shifts in system support at the individual level that can be explained by status as election winners, attention to the media, particularly serious news coverage and economic perceptions. The results have implications for the debate over measures of system support such as trust, cynicism and efficacy. EU Fifth Framework Programme; Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
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This article looks at the socio-demographic sources of turnout decline in Canada. The analysis is based on the Canadian Election Studies that have been conducted between 1968 and 2000. There is a small period effect which suggests that the propensity to vote has declined marginally (by about three percentage points) in all demographic groups. There are substantial life cycle effects – that is, turnout shifts within a given cohort as members of that cohort grow older. There are powerful generation effects: turnout differs among the various cohorts even when we compare them at the same stage of their life cycle. The much lower turnout among the post-baby-boomers is the main reason why turnout has declined overall in Canada. The most recent generations are less prone to vote in good part because they pay less attention to politics and because they are less likely to adhere to the norm that voting is not only a right, but also a moral duty. The decline in turnout thus reflects a larger cultural change. Education remains an important correlate of voting. The increase in educational attainment has contributed to dampening the decline in turnout. There is no evidence that the decline in turnout has been more acute among certain sub-groups of the electorate (leaving aside age and education).
Article
This book is the first in a planned trilogy by Pippa Norris on challenges of electoral integrity to be published by Cambridge University Press. Unfortunately too often elections around the globe are deeply flawed or even fail. Why does this matter? It is widely suspected that such contests will undermine confidence in elected authorities, damage voting turnout, trigger protests, exacerbate conflict, and occasionally lead to regime change. Well-run elections, by themselves, are insufficient for successful transitions to democracy. But flawed, or even failed, contests are thought to wreck fragile progress. Is there good evidence for these claims? Under what circumstances do failed elections undermine legitimacy? With a global perspective, using new sources of data for mass and elite evidence, this book provides fresh insights into these major issues.
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Democratic elections are designed to create unequal outcomes-for some to win, others have to lose. This book examines the consequences of this inequality for the legitimacy of democratic political institutions and systems. Using survey data collected in old and new democracies around the globe, the authors argue that losing generates ambivalent attitudes towards political authorities. Because the efficacy and ultimately the survival of democratic regimes can be seriously threatened if the losers do not consent to their loss, the central themes of this book focus on losing-how losers respond to their loss and how institutions shape losing. While there tends to be a gap in support for the political system between winners and losers, it is not ubiquitous. The book paints a picture of losers' consent that portrays losers as political actors whose experience and whose incentives to accept defeat are shaped both by who they are as individuals as well as the political environment in which loss is given meaning. Given that the winner-loser gap in legitimacy is a persistent feature of democratic politics, the findings presented in this book have important implications for our understanding of the functioning and stability of democracies since being able to accept losing is one of the central, if not the central, requirement of democracy. The book contributes to our understanding of political legitimacy, comparative political behaviour, the comparative study of elections and political institutions, as well as issues of democratic stability, design, and transition. © Christopher J. Anderson, André Blais, Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan, and Ola Listhaug 2005. All rights reserved.
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Voter ID laws require individuals to show government-endorsed identification when casting their ballots on Election Day. Whereas some see these laws as necessary to prevent voting fraud, others argue that fraud is extremely rare and that voter ID laws can suppress voting. The relative newness of the laws, along with variance in their substance, suggests that the public may possess low information about voter ID laws; thus, opinions on the issue may be influenced by political information, group predispositions, and the media. Using data from a national poll ( n = 906), this study investigates what underlies opinion on voter ID laws. The results indicate that political predispositions, including ideology, party identification, and racial attitudes, influence support for such laws. The results also yield evidence of several types of information effects. A question-wording experiment shows that exposure to an anti–voter ID law argument framing voter ID laws as preventing eligible people from voting reduced support, whereas other framing treatments (pro and con) had no discernible impact on opinion. A “polarization effect” emerges, with issue familiarity magnifying the gap in opinion between liberals and conservatives. Fox News viewers are particularly likely to support voter ID laws, though no other forms of media use are significantly related to support. Finally, perceptions of voting fraud as “common” are associated with support for voter ID laws.
Book
From Kosovo to Kabul, the last decade witnessed growing interest in ?electoral engineering?. Reformers have sought to achieve either greater government accountability through majoritarian arrangements or wider parliamentary diversity through proportional formula. Underlying the normative debates are important claims about the impact and consequences of electoral reform for political representation and voting behavior. The study compares and evaluates two broad schools of thought, each offering contracting expectations. One popular approach claims that formal rules define electoral incentives facing parties, politicians and citizens. By changing these rules, rational choice institutionalism claims that we have the capacity to shape political behavior. Alternative cultural modernization theories differ in their emphasis on the primary motors driving human behavior, their expectations about the pace of change, and also their assumptions about the ability of formal institutional rules to alter, rather than adapt to, deeply embedded and habitual social norms and patterns of human behavior.
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Movement of party identification, both within and across generations, is increasingly seen as responsive to current policy preferences. We explore cross-generational change using three-wave parent-offspring data. The results strongly support the revised view of a more malleable partisanship influenced by offspring issue preferences. Nonetheless, parents play a major role in determining the initial political direction of their offspring and continue to play a significant though reduced role in the over-time development of their adult children. The results are similar for presidential preferences, though parental influence is entirely channeled through offspring partisanship.
Article
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in state legislation likely to reduce access for some voters, including photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements, registration restrictions, absentee ballot voting restrictions, and reductions in early voting. Political operatives often ascribe malicious motives when their opponents either endorse or oppose such legislation. In an effort to bring empirical clarity and epistemological standards to what has been a deeply-charged, partisan, and frequently anecdotal debate, we use multiple specialized regression approaches to examine factors associated with both the proposal and adoption of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006–2011. Our results indicate that proposal and passage are highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs. These findings are consistent with a scenario in which the targeted demobilization of minority voters and African Americans is a central driver of recent legislative developments. We discuss the implications of these results for current partisan and legal debates regarding voter restrictions and our understanding of the conditions incentivizing modern suppression efforts. Further, we situate these policies within developments in social welfare and criminal justice policy that collectively reduce electoral access among the socially marginalized.
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In spite of substantial public controversy, very little reliable data exists concerning the frequency with which non-citizen immigrants participate in United States elections. Although such participation is a violation of election laws in most parts of the United States, enforcement depends principally on disclosure of citizenship status at the time of voter registration. This study examines participation rates by non-citizens using a nationally representative sample that includes non-citizen immigrants. We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections. Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.
Book
Institutions to electoral reform advocates and political scientists#x2014;both argue that variation in electoral institutions affectshow elected officials and citizens behave. Change the rules, and citizen engagement with politics can be renewed. Yeta look at the record of electoral reformreveals a string of disappointments. This book examines a variety of reforms, including campaign finance,direct democracy, legislativeterm limits, and changes to the electoral system itself. This study findselectoral reforms have limited, and in many cases no,effects. Despite reform claims, and contrary to the 2018;institutions matter literature, findings heresuggestthere are hard limits to effects of electoral reform. The explanations for this are threefold. The first is political. Reformers exaggerate claimsabout transformative effects of new electoral rules, yet their goal may simply be to maximize their partisan advantage.The second is empirical. Cross-sectional comparative research demonstratesthat variation in electoral institutions corresponds with different patterns of political attitudes and behaviour. But this method cannot assess what happens when rules are changed. Using examples from the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere, this book examinesattitudes and behaviouracross time where rules were changed. Results do not match expectations from the institutional literature. The third is a point of logic. There is an inflated sense of the effects of institutions generally, and of electoral institutions in particular. Given larger social and economic forces at play, it is unrealistic to expect that changes in electoral arrangements will have substantial effects on political engagement or onhow people viewpolitics and politicians.
Article
Content analyses have documented media negativity toward democratic institutions, and survey data have confirmed increasingly negative perceptions of these institutions. This study examines the impact of various media on confidence in democratic institutions — the Office of the Presidency, Congress, the criminal court system, the news media, the police, and the public school system. After accounting for the impact of respondent demographics, knowledge (expertise), and political partisanship, the results revealed limited influence of media use on perceptions of these institutions. Contrary to expectations, television news viewing predicted positively to perceptions of the news media and public schools, and newspaper reading was associated with favorable evaluations of the criminal court system and schools. Significant interaction effects were found for the news media and public schools, with listening to political talk radio eliciting lower levels of confidence among stronger Republican partisans. The only negative main effect found was that of non‐traditional news sources (television tabloids, television entertainment talk shows and television political talk shows) on perceptions of the police.
Article
Allegations of voting irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections seemingly compromised the integrity of the electoral outcomes. Because elections inform voters and provide them with information to be used in future elections, one can speculate that voters also can learn to fear electoral unfairness in future elections. This article examines how Blacks, Whites, and Latinos assessed prospects for voting irregularities in the 2008 presidential election. Using public opinion data from the National Politics and Socialization Survey, the analysis discerns whether there are racial differences in perceptions of voting irregularities. It tests the influence of trust in national government, ethics about the importance of the vote, and group consciousness (for Black respondents, specifically) in determining fear of voting irregularities. Results indicate generalized fear of voting irregularities, without racial differences. Political distrust enhances fear of voting irregularities. Blacks’ racial consciousness enhances fear of voting irregularities in the 2008 presidential election.
Article
Electoral governance is a crucial variable in securing the credibility of elections in emerging democracies, but remains largely ignored in the comparative study of democratization. This article develops some basic analytical tools to advance comparative analysis and understanding of this neglected topic. It conceptualizes electoral governance as a set of related activities that involves rule making, rule application, and rule adjudication. It identifies the provision of procedural certainty to secure the substantive uncertainty of democratic elections as the principal task of electoral governance. It argues that electoral governance, while socially and institutionally embedded, matters most during the indeterminate conditions that typically attend democratization. Finally, it outlines a research agenda that covers the comparative study of the structures as well as the processes of electoral governance.
Article
Nonpartisan elections typically disadvantage ethnic minorities and the less affluent classes. This fact is usually attributed to the absence of a partisan ballot's cueing effects. This paper examines a different disadvantaging mechanism, the "nonpartisan slating group," which in the four cities we studied, functioned as a genuine party in a local one-party system. When the city council is elected at large, such slating groups can control membership on council over a considerable period of time.
Article
This article seeks to push the development of a new sub-field of research in the field of democratisation and institutional design, namely the relationship between the institutionalisation of electoral politics - including the administration of elections - and the development of political legitimacy and democratic consolidation in new democracies. Focus is on the conduct of elections and research questions are formulated to enable us to gauge the effectiveness and contribution of election related institutional choices and the impact of various stages of the implementation process. An analysis of eight African countries reveals that individual experiences related to the conduct of elections appears to have a direct bearing on how the sense of political efficacy develops in individuals, and that this is an important factor behind the development of legitimacy and progression towards democratic consolidation.
Article
We examine the effects of voting for the winners and losers of presidential and congressional elections on political trust. On the basis of survey and electoral data for 1972 and 1996, we argue and demonstrate empirically that presidential winner–loser status systematically affects citizens' trust in government. We find that voters for the losers of the presidential contest show lower levels of trust. Moreover, we find that voting for the congressional winners does not attenuate this effect. Political trust is highest among voters who voted either for both the presidential and congressional winners or the presidential winner and congressional losers; trust is lowest among those who voted for both the presidential and congressional losers or congressional winners and the presidential loser.
Article
Scholars generally agree that the electorate's reaction to an election outcome has important systemic consequences. As Ginsberg and Weissberg point out, ‘every election represents a test and potentially a threat to support for the political regime. Electoral conflicts may strain public acceptance of legal and institutional processes.’ The basic idea is that regime support among citizens in the aftermath of an election depends on the widespread belief that the electoral contest has been resolved in a legitimate fashion.
Article
The paper seeks to reconcile insights from winner–loser gap research with mainstream understanding of election legitimacy. The paper acknowledges that winning and losing elections creates differential incentives for citizens to remain supportive of their political system, but it argues that losers nevertheless have enough reasons to remain supportive in absolute terms. Drawing on democratic theory, the paper develops a rationale for why citizens are willing to accept electoral defeat voluntarily, and suggest a new way to conceptualize citizen reactions to election outcomes. It presents findings from a sample of election studies in established democracies to show that winners typically become more supportive whereas losers at minimum retain their level of support from before the election. It concludes that elections, when reasonably well executed, as they most often are in established democracies, build system support rather than undermine it.Highlights► Losers will remain supportive provided that certain conditions are fulfilled. ► The crucial conditions are procedurial and consequential. ► Elections in established democracies typically build system support among both winners and losers
Article
Using surveys conducted in sixteen mature and newly established democracies around the globe, this study examines the effect of corruption on people's attitudes toward government. The analysis demonstrates that citizens in countries with higher levels of corruption express more negative evaluations of the performance of the political system and exhibit lower levels of trust in civil servants. However, the results also show that the negative effect of corruption on evaluations of the political system is significantly attenuated among supporters of the incumbent political authorities. These findings provide strong and systematic evidence that informal political practices, especially those that compromise important democratic principles, should be considered important indicators of political system performance. Moreover, they imply that, while corruption is a powerful determinant of political support across widely varying political, cultural, and economic contexts, it does not uniformly diminish support for political institutions across all segments of the electorate.
Article
There is a growing interest among comparative political scientists in electoral integrity, yet little is known about what motivates citizen confidence in the electoral process. This article explores the factors that shape perceptions of electoral conduct in a cross-national context, testing the hypothesis that institutional structures that promote a ‘level playing field’ at each stage of the electoral process will enhance the extent to which voters perceive their elections to be fair. The analyses carried out here are based on 28 elections that formed part of Module 1 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Project. Multilevel models including both individual- and election-level variables demonstrate that proportional electoral systems and the public funding of parties have positive impacts on confidence in the conduct of elections, while the formal independence of electoral management bodies is negatively associated with this variable.
Article
Electoral governance is a crucial variable in securing credible elections in emerging democracies, but remains largely ignored in the comparative study of democratization. The article develops some basic analytical tools to advance comparative analysis and understanding of this neglected topic. It conceptualizes electoral governance as a set of related activities that involves rule making, rule application, and rule adjudication. It identifies the provision of procedural certainty to secure the substantive uncertainty of democratic elections as the principal task of electoral governance. It argues that electoral governance, while socially and institutionally embedded, matters most during the indeterminate conditions that typically attend democratization. Finally, it outlines a research agenda that covers the comparative study of the structures as well as the processes of electoral governance.
Article
Here is the unabridged version of the classic theoretical study of voting behavior, originally published in 1960. It is a standard reference in the field of electoral research, presenting formulations of the theoretical issues that have been the focus of scholarly publication. No single study matches the study of The American Voter.
Article
In the current debate over the constitutionality of voter identification laws, both the Supreme Court and defenders of such laws have justified them, in part, as counteracting a widespread fear of voter fraud that leads citizens to disengage from the democracy. Because actual evidence of voter impersonation fraud is rare and difficult to come by if fraud is successful, reliance on public opinion as to the prevalence of fraud threatens to allow courts to evade the difficult task of balancing the actual constitutional risks involved. In this short Article we employ a unique survey to evaluate the causes and effects of public opinion regarding voter fraud. We find that perceptions of fraud have no relationship to an individual’s likelihood of turning out to vote. We also find that voters who were subject to stricter identification requirements believe fraud is just as widespread as do voters subject to less restrictive identification requirements.
Article
This article is the first to test the empirical assumptions about American public opinion found in the Supreme Court's opinions concerning campaign finance reform. The area of campaign finance is a unique one in First Amendment law because the Court has allowed the mere perception of a problem (in this case, "corruption") to justify the curtailment of recognized First Amendment rights of speech and association. Since Buckley v. Valeo, defendants in campaign finance cases have proffered various types of evidence to support the notion that the public perceives a great deal of corruption produced by the campaign finance system. Most recently, in McConnell v. FEC, in which the Court upheld the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, both the Department of Justice and the plaintiffs conducted and submitted into evidence public opinion polls measuring the public's perception of corruption. This article examines the data presented in that case, but also examines forty years of survey data of public attitudes toward corruption in government. We argue that trends in public perception of corruption have little to do with the campaign finance system. The share of the population describing government as corrupt went down even as soft money contributions skyrocketed. Moreover, the survey data suggest that an individual's perception of corruption derives from that person's (1) position in society (race, income, education level); (2) opinion of the incumbent President and performance of the economy over the previous year; and (3) general attitudes concerning taxation and "big government." Although we conclude that, indeed, a large majority of Americans believe that the campaign finance system contributes to corruption in government, the data suggest that campaign finance reform will have no effect on these attitudes.
The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation Is Reshaping American Politics
  • R Dalton
Dalton, R., 2009. The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation Is Reshaping American Politics. CQ Press, Washington, DC.
The Right to Vote. Basic Books
  • A Keyssar
Keyssar, A., 2000. The Right to Vote. Basic Books, New York.
Dis)counting on democracy to work: perceptions of electoral fairness in the 2008 presidential election Perceptions of corruption and campaign finance: when public opinion determines constitutional law
  • S Nunnally
Nunnally, S., 2011. (Dis)counting on democracy to work: perceptions of electoral fairness in the 2008 presidential election. J. Black Stud. 42 (6), 923e942. Persily, N., Lammie, K., 2004. Perceptions of corruption and campaign finance: when public opinion determines constitutional law. Univ. Pa. Law Rev. 153 (1), 119e180.
Do non-citizens vote in U.S. Elections? Elect. Stud. 36, 149e157 Differentiating winners: how elec-tions affect satisfaction with democracy
  • J T Richman
  • C Gulshan
  • D C Earnest
Richman, J.T., Gulshan, C., Earnest, D.C., 2014. Do non-citizens vote in U.S. Elections? Elect. Stud. 36, 149e157. Singh, S., Karakoc, E., Blais, A., 2012. Differentiating winners: how elec-tions affect satisfaction with democracy. Elect. Stud. 31 (1), 201e211.
Nathan Persily (Columbia Law) Daniel Tokaji (Ohio State Law), and a group of state and local election officials to create the index. 4 State-level measures of election performance are also available for
  • Barry Harvard
  • Burden
Harvard), Barry Burden (Wisconsin), Heather Gerken (Yale Law), Paul Gronke (Reed), Christopher Mann (Miami), Nathan Persily (Columbia Law), Bob Stein (Rice), Daniel Tokaji (Ohio State Law), and a group of state and local election officials to create the index. 4 State-level measures of election performance are also available for 2008 and 2010. Most states' performance scores were improving from 2010 to 2012, and scores from those years are well correlated (.82).
International principles for electoral integrity
  • T Hall
  • T A Wang
Hall, T., Wang, T.A., 2008. International principles for electoral integrity. In: Michael Alvarez, R., Hall, T.E., Hyde, S.D. (Eds.), Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation. Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC.
Generations and Democratic Attitudes in Advanced Democracies
  • D Denemark
  • T Donovan
  • R Niemi
Denemark, D., Donovan, T., Niemi, R., 2012. Generations and Democratic Attitudes in Advanced Democracies. Paper presented at the World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Madrid, Spain. July 10.
Vote fraud in the eye of the beholder: the role of public opinion in the challenge to voter identification requirements
  • S Ansolobehere
  • N Persily
Ansolobehere, S., Persily, N., 2008. Vote fraud in the eye of the beholder: the role of public opinion in the challenge to voter identification requirements. Harv. Law Rev. 121, 1737e1774.
Accepting the election outcome: the effect of participation on losers' consent
  • R Nadeu
  • A Blais
Nadeu, R., Blais, A., 1993. Accepting the election outcome: the effect of participation on losers' consent. Br. J. Polit. Sci. 23 (4), 553e563.