Perceptions Of Electoral Integrity Research Articles

Fairness beyond the ballot: A comparative analysis of failures of electoral integrity, perceptions of electoral fairness, and attitudes towards democracy across 18 countries

Trust in the integrity of the electoral process is essential for a functioning democracy. However, doubts about the legitimacy of electoral processes have increased in established and emerging democracies. We analyzed electoral integrity perceptions and related variables across 26 elections and 18 countries using post-election surveys conducted between 2004 and 2021 as part of the Comparative National Elections Project. We found that citizens' experiences of electoral integrity failures, such as bribery and intimidation, are crucial in shaping their perceptions of electoral integrity. Additionally, we found that autonomous electoral offices have little effect on citizens’ perceptions of integrity and freedom in the electoral process. Finally, electoral integrity perceptions significantly impact attitudes towards democracy. Our results emphasize the importance of well-functioning electoral processes and institutions in upholding the legitimacy of democracies.

African election management bodies in the era of democratic backsliding

ABSTRACT Although democratisation has evolved unevenly across Africa since the 1990s, there has been progress in the establishment and strengthening of independent election management bodies (EMBs). Since the mid-2000s, scholars and analysts have identified a global trend toward democratic backsliding, characterised in part by the erosion of democratic institutions. Such a trend might be expected to pose significant threats to EMBs. This article contributes new insights through a review of data from the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity and Varieties of Democracy projects. While it finds wide variation in EMB performance and autonomy, there is no overall pattern of decline that might be associated with democratic backsliding in Africa. Case analysis of Ghana and Zambia further demonstrates that the challenges EMBs face are multifaceted and not only driven by anti-democratic leaders. Co-ordinated efforts are therefore needed to strengthen EMB autonomy and capacity to (re)build trust and deliver elections with integrity.

Mind the gap(s): Winning, losing, and perceptions of electoral integrity in mixed-member proportional systems

This study investigates whether and how experiences of winning and losing at the ballot box shape voters' views about the integrity of the electoral process in Germany's mixed-member proportional system. Relying on comprehensive data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) 2021, the analysis provides evidence for a consistent winner-loser gap in voters' electoral-integrity perceptions, with electoral losers evaluating the electoral process systematically more negative than electoral winners. Moreover, the analysis shows that the winner-loser gap is particularly pronounced for voters who lost in two consecutive federal elections (‘repeated losers’) as well as for those who suffered electoral defeat with both their list and district votes (‘double losers’). These findings provide novel insights on how voters in mixed-member proportional systems cope with winning and losing at the ballot box, highlighting that electoral losers place (part of) the blame for their electoral defeat on the electoral process and procedures as such. In addition, the findings point to the relevance of specific features of electoral systems in shaping winner-loser gaps in electoral-integrity beliefs.

Lost in the Mail? Vote by Mail and Voter Confidence

The use of vote by mail was an important topic during the 2020 election cycle. This election coincided with the most significant public health crisis in the United States in a century, combined with a scandal at the U.S. Postal Service to slow down mail ballots to potentially benefit President Trump and a coordinated messaging campaign to question the results of the election, all of which may have led to a drop in voter confidence. However, what impact does mail voting have on voter confidence in isolation? I seek to answer this by leveraging the initial use of postal voting in Washington and Colorado through the Survey of the Performance of American Elections dataset and difference-in-differences design and two types of matching analyses. In doing so, I demonstrate that the implementation of vote by mail causes a significant decrease in voter confidence in both states. However, this decrease appears to be temporary, disappearing after only a single election cycle. These results shed light on the potential impact of recent expansions of postal voting in the United States while also furthering the debate around perceptions of electoral integrity in democratic systems.

Voting and winning: perceptions of electoral integrity in consolidating democracies

ABSTRACT How do voters in consolidating democracies see electoral integrity? How does election affect the change in perception of electoral integrity among these voters? What role does winning play in seeing an election as free and fair? Building on the theory of the winner-loser gap, we answer these questions using original two-wave panel surveys we conducted before and after three parliamentary elections in Southeast Europe in 2018 and 2020. The article focuses on changes of perception of electoral integrity as a function of satisfaction with the electoral results in contexts where the quality of elections has always been at the centre of political conflict. We specifically explore the socialization effect of elections in environments with notoriously low trust in political institutions and high electoral stakes. The article goes beyond the “sore loser” hypothesis and examines voters’ both political preferences and personal characteristics potentially responsible for the change in perception of electoral integrity over the course of electoral cycle.

Governance and Electoral Integrity: Evidence from Subnational India

This article presents the findings of perceptions of electoral integrity survey for subnational elections in India between 2015 and 2017. The perceptions of electoral integrity survey is an attempt to provide a comprehensive, impartial and independent source of information derived from experts about elections conforming to internationally recognized principles and standards. The article then evaluates the factors that account for differences in the perceptions of electoral integrity in India. We show that higher-income states in India tend to have higher levels of electoral integrity. However, we argue that differences in the quality of governance best explain subnational variation in the perceptions of electoral integrity in India.

Lost in the Mail? Vote be Mail and Voter Confidence

Recently, the use of vote-by-mail has been increasing in popularity, with Washington, Colorado, and Hawaii moving exclusively to mail-based election systems. While election reformers tout the various benefits of this change, what impact does mail voting have on voter confidence? I seek to answer this by by leveraging the implementation of postal voting in Washington and Colorado through the use of the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) dataset, along with difference-in-differences design, genetic matching, Mahalanobis distance matching, and ordinal logistic regression analysis. In doing so, I demonstrate that the implementation of vote by mail causes a significant decrease in voter confidence in both states. However, this decrease appears to be temporary, disappearing after only single election cycle. These results shed light on the potential impact of recent expansions of convenience voting in the United States, while also furthering the debate around perceptions of electoral integrity in democratic systems.

On the front lines of democracy: perceptions of electoral officials and democratic elections

ABSTRACTElectoral officials play a crucial role in instilling confidence in elections and democracy. They are involved in the most important tasks of running elections, from registering voters to counting the ballots. This article employs survey data from 35 countries from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010–2014) which asks respondents about their perceptions of electoral integrity and the quality of democracy in their country. The analysis demonstrates the relationship between perceptions of the fairness of electoral officials and two important outcomes: confidence in the fairness of the vote count, and perceptions of the overall quality of democracy. It additionally considers under which circumstances this relationship is most pronounced and shows that the relationship between an individual’s perceptions of electoral officials and perceptions of electoral integrity is more pronounced in countries where there is a low liberal democracy index.

Comparative Research is Harder Than We Thought: Regional Differences in Experts’ Understanding of Electoral Integrity Questions

Expert evaluations about countries form the backbone of comparative political research. It is reasonable to assume that such respondents, no matter the region they specialize in, will have a comparable understanding of the phenomena tapped by expert surveys. This is necessary to get results that can be compared across countries, which is the fundamental goal of these measurement activities. We empirically test this assumption using measurement invariance techniques which have not been applied to expert surveys before. Used most often to test the cross-cultural validity and translation effects of public opinion scales, the measurement invariance tests evaluate the comparability of scale items across any groups. We apply them to the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) dataset. Our findings suggest that cross-regional comparability fails for all eleven dimensions identified in PEI. Results indicate which items remain comparable, at least across most regions, and point to the need of more rigorous procedures to develop expert survey questions.

The Contexts of Electoral Accountability: Electoral Integrity Performance Voting in 23 Democracies

AbstractElectoral accountability is typically identified with retrospective economic voting even though it is widely recognized that explaining electors’ assignment of responsibility also implies considering issues other than the economy. Recently, scholars have also stressed the role of election quality in contributing to democratic legitimacy of elected authorities. In this perspective, electoral integrity as a valence issue would influence voters’ behaviour, structuring attitudes about accountability in substantial ways. This effect would also be moderated by individual- and country-level factors. I test these assumptions in 23 countries worldwide using a multilevel analysis of data from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey. Results indicate that the strength of the link between perceptions of electoral integrity and vote for the incumbent seems to be affected by individual characteristics such as partisanship, while it is also moderated by specific contextual characteristics such as government clarity of responsibility and pluralism of the media.

“It’s Largely a Rigged System”: Voter Confidence and the Winner Effect in 2016

The 2016 presidential election provided a unique opportunity to revisit two competing hypotheses for how voters establish their perceptions of electoral integrity. First, mass public opinion is believed to derive from elite messages. In the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump maintained that the election system was “rigged,” while election administration experts and officials received considerable media coverage in their efforts to counter Trump’s claims. Second, literature on voter confidence has established a “winner effect”—voters who cast ballots for winners are more likely than voters on the losing side to believe their vote was counted correctly. Thus, voters were exposed to two theoretically opposite effects. In this paper, we find that the “winner” effect mitigates the effects from strong pre-election cues from elites. We also show the effect of pre-election attention to the rigging issue, find a symmetry of the election outcome effect for winners and losers, and reconsider our explanations of the winner effect. Finally, we go beyond the existing studies of the winner effect to consider the kind of citizens who are most susceptible to that effect.

Citizens’ media use and the accuracy of their perceptions of electoral integrity

Combining data from the sixth wave (2010–2014) of the World Values Survey (WVS) and the 2012–2013 Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) expert survey, this study looks at the link between the frequency of citizens’ informational use of traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio and TV) and the internet, and the accuracy of their perceptions of the electoral process, and investigates how this link varies depending on countries’ levels of press freedom. A multilevel analysis including data from 16 countries shows that the frequency of the use of traditional media has a significantly more positive effect on the accuracy of citizens’ perceptions of electoral integrity in countries with high levels of press freedom compared with countries with low levels of press freedom. The frequency of the use of the internet relates similarly to the accuracy of perceptions of electoral integrity in countries with high and low levels of press freedom.

Public evaluations of electoral institutions in Mexico: An analysis of the IFE and TRIFE in the 2006 and 2012 elections

Given the important role of election management in new democracies, this paper explores citizens' opinions of Mexico's key electoral institutions – the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TRIFE) – within the context of the 2006 and 2012 Mexican general elections. Using data from the Mexico 2006 Panel Study and the Mexico 2012 Panel Study, we find that key predictors of public opinion of Mexico's key electoral institutions include support for specific presidential candidates and partisan identification, but also perceptions of electoral integrity, the urban–rural divide, and other socio-demographic variables. In particular, this study finds strong support of a “winner's effect” in the context of the 2006 and 2012 Mexican elections. These findings raise important questions regarding citizens' opinions of Mexico's key electoral institutions.

Partisan losers' effects: Perceptions of electoral integrity in Mexico

We examine the partisan, logistic, and contextual factors affecting citizens' perceptions of electoral integrity. Drawing on original survey data collected at different stages of the 2012 Mexican presidential election, we find that confidence in the integrity of the electoral process varies not only over time, but also across partisanship. While those who supported the candidate on the left consistently expressed concerns about electoral corruption, supporters of the incumbent party discredited the integrity of the election only after learning their candidate's defeat. Furthermore, we provide the first empirical assessment of the relationship between voters' perceptions of electoral integrity and the presence of observers and party representatives at the polling station. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the political factors that influence citizens' trust in elections.

Can experts judge elections? Testing the validity of expert judgments for measuring election integrity

AbstractExpert surveys have been used to measure a wide variety of phenomena in political science, ranging from party positions, to corruption, to the quality of democracy and elections. However, expert judgments raise important validity concerns, both about the object being measured as well as the experts. It is argued in this article that the context of evaluation is also important to consider when assessing the validity of expert surveys. This is even more important for expert surveys with a comprehensive, worldwide scope, such as democracy or corruption indices. This article tests the validity of expert judgments about election integrity – a topic of increasing concern to both the international community and academics. Evaluating expert judgments of election integrity provides an important contribution to the literature evaluating the validity of expert surveys as instruments of measurement as: (1) the object under study is particularly complex to define and multifaceted; and (2) election integrity is measured in widely varying institutional contexts, ranging from electoral autocracies to liberal democracies. Three potential sources of bias are analysed (the object, the experts and the context), using a unique new dataset on election integrity entitled the ‘Perceptions of Electoral Integrity’ dataset. The data include over 800 experts in 66 parliamentary and presidential elections worldwide. It is found that validity of expert judgments about election integrity is increased if experts are asked to provide factual information (rather than evaluative judgments), and if they are asked to evaluate election day (rather than pre‐election) integrity. It is also found that ideologically polarised elections and elections of lower integrity increase expert disagreement about election integrity. The article concludes with suggestions for researchers using the expert survey data on election integrity on how to check the validity of their data and adjust their analyses accordingly, and outlines some remaining challenges for future data collection using expert surveys.

Building Confidence in Elections: The Case of Electoral Monitors in Kosova

AbstractWhile most research on electoral monitors has focused on the effect of electoral monitors on politicians and their behavior in terms of committing electoral fraud, this study examines the effect of electoral monitors on citizens, and their effect, in particular, on people's perceptions of electoral integrity and behavior in terms of turnout at the polls. To examine this relationship, I conducted a field experiment around the 2009/2010 municipal elections in Kosova, which varied the amount of information people had about the responsibilities of monitors in these elections. In the experiment, people who had more information about the monitors' responsibilities believed that the elections were more free and fair than those who had less information, and also believed that the monitors helped make these elections more free and fair, even though they were not more likely to vote as a result.

Assessing the Quality of Elections

Many malpractices generate flawed elections which fail to meet international standards of electoral integrity, including issues such as fraud, malpractice, vote-rigging, ballot-stuffing, and voter suppression. Determining when, where, and why elections succeed or fail is a matter of growing concern for the international community—yet to date scholars and practitioners have been hindered by lack of reliable, credible, and consistent evidence which could be used to compare the quality of elections around the world. This paper presents the first results of a new pilot study, based on an expert survey of Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) applied to 20 countries. This data facilitates comparison of an overall standardized 100-point PEI index for each contest, or the results can be examined in more fine-grained detail on eleven dimensions of electoral integrity, or for each of the separate 49 items. The PEI index demonstrates high levels of external validity, internal validity, and legitimacy. The paper concludes that, when triangulated with other evidence, PEI can address many research issues, such as how best to classify electoral autocracies, as well as proving useful for policymakers concerned with evaluating “what works” to strengthen electoral integrity.

Perceptions of Electoral Fairness and Voter Turnout

Previous research has established a link between turnout and the extent to which voters are faced with a “meaningful” partisan choice in elections; this study extends the logic of this argument to perceptions of the “meaningfulness” of electoral conduct. It hypothesizes that perceptions of electoral integrity are positively related to turnout. The empirical analysis to test this hypothesis is based on aggregate-level data from 31 countries, combined with survey results from Module 1 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems survey project, which includes new and established democracies. Multilevel modeling is employed to control for a variety of individual- and election-level variables that have been found in previous research to influence turnout. The results of the analysis show that perceptions of electoral integrity are indeed positively associated with propensity to vote.

American political science review: Albert D. Cover and Bruce S. Brumberg, ‘Baby books and ballots: The impact of congressional mail on constituent opinion’, 76:2, June 1982, pp. 347–59

We examine the partisan, logistic, and contextual factors affecting citizens' perceptions of electoral integrity. Drawing on original survey data collected at different stages of the 2012 Mexican presidential election, we find that confidence in the integrity of the electoral process varies not only over time, but also across partisanship. While those who supported the candidate on the left consistently expressed concerns about electoral corruption, supporters of the incumbent party discredited the integrity of the election only after learning their candidate's defeat. Furthermore, we provide the first empirical assessment of the relationship between voters' perceptions of electoral integrity and the presence of observers and party representatives at the polling station. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the political factors that influence citizens' trust in elections.

Western political quarterly: Pamela Johnston Conover and Stanley Feldman, ‘Projection and the perception of candidates’ issue positions', 35:2, June 1982, pp. 228–44

We examine the partisan, logistic, and contextual factors affecting citizens' perceptions of electoral integrity. Drawing on original survey data collected at different stages of the 2012 Mexican presidential election, we find that confidence in the integrity of the electoral process varies not only over time, but also across partisanship. While those who supported the candidate on the left consistently expressed concerns about electoral corruption, supporters of the incumbent party discredited the integrity of the election only after learning their candidate's defeat. Furthermore, we provide the first empirical assessment of the relationship between voters' perceptions of electoral integrity and the presence of observers and party representatives at the polling station. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the political factors that influence citizens' trust in elections.