Election Monitor Access and Citizens’ Trust in U.S. Elections

• In Event: Public Trust in Elections: Causes and Consequences from a Global Perspective

Abstract

The public’s confidence in an election matters for countries’ democratic trajectories and stability. Many analysts have accordingly expressed concern about American citizens’ lack of trust in the United States’ elections. This study examines the role that election observers might play in repairing that trust. An experiment fielded around the 2022 U.S. midterm election asked respondents about how credible they thought elections were in ten different U.S. states. Prior to asking the questions about election credibility, randomly-selected respondents read truthful information about which types of election monitors were permitted in each state: international nonpartisan observers, domestic nonpartisan observers, domestic party-affiliated observers, or combinations of all three. Informing respondents about domestic nonpartisan observers’ access in a state improved respondents’ perceptions of election credibility relative to a control group that heard no information about election observers as well as relative to all other combinations of information about election observers. The effect is similar for both Republicans and Democrats. By contrast, informing respondents about domestic party-affiliated observers’ presence or international nonpartisan observers’ presence decrease confidence in states’ elections. The findings suggest that enhancing the capacity and access of nonpartisan domestic observers could help address Americans’ waning trust in their elections and that avoiding the politicization of election observers will also be key.

Authors

• Sarah S. Bush, University of Pennsylvania

• Lauren Prather, University of California, San Diego