... 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. ...