Trust in the Count: Improving Voter Confidence with Post-election Audits

Author:

Jaffe Jacob1ORCID,Loffredo Joseph R2ORCID,Baltz Samuel3ORCID,Flores Alejandro4ORCID,Stewart Charles5

Affiliation:

1. Department of Political Science, Stanford University Postdoctoral Fellow, , Stanford, CA, US

2. Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD Candidate, , Cambridge, MA, US

3. Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Scientist, , Cambridge, MA, US

4. Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow, , Cambridge, MA, US

5. Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, , Cambridge, MA, US

Abstract

Abstract Post-election audits are thought to bolster voter confidence in elections, but it is unclear which aspects of audits drive public trust. Using preregistered vignette and conjoint survey experiments administered by YouGov on a sample of 2,000 American respondents, we find that how an audit is conducted is more important than what an audit finds. Structural features of audits, like who conducts it and how its results are announced, turn out to be more consequential to voter evaluations of election results than the actual discrepancy found. Moreover, while Democrats and Republicans have increasingly divided views of the state of democracy in the United States, they are similarly receptive to information presented about audits and largely agree that audits are effective tools for detecting errors in vote counting. Our findings thus reinforce the expectation that audits do increase voter trust and highlight that election administrators can strengthen voter confidence by making audits as transparent as possible.

Funder

MIT Election Data and Science Lab

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

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4. Learning from Recounts;Ansolabehere;Election Law Journal,2018

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