Trust In Elections Research Articles

Success Factors for Conceptual Digital Voting Model

With the advancement of technology in the digital age, blockchain technology has evolved into a technology critical to delivering secure and reliable decentralized applications. An application that has brought blockchain technology is elections to close the gap in traditional elections for transparency and credibility However, in COVID-19, bringing this technology to change elections allows access to all citizens to be able to vote. This research uses a structural equation model (SEM) questionnaire to explore the success factors of election implementation using blockchain technology was analysed from 400 voters who responded to the questionnaire using Mplus Version 7. This research has prepared a conceptual model supporting the effecting factors in implementing an election system using blockchain technology with voters The researcher has created an electoral system using blockchain technology that is readily available. Technology acceptance factor and credibility were utilized from the voters’ point of view in 9 Factors. Those interested in applying the model to improve elections using blockchain technology can study to improve elections. In addition, Conceptual model ideas were used to develop a model for acceptance and trust in elections using blockchain technology.

The Global Crisis of Trust in Elections

Abstract 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.

Where Are the Sore Losers? Competitive Authoritarianism, Incumbent Defeat, and Electoral Trust in Zambia's 2021 Election.

How do electoral turnovers shape citizen perceptions of election quality in competitive authoritarian regimes? We argue that electoral outcomes are crucial for determining perceptions of electoral quality. While detailed evaluation of electoral trust is complex in competitive autocracies with institutional uncertainty and polarized electoral environments, turnovers send strong and unequivocal signals about election quality. Previous literature has noted a strong partisan divide in electoral trust in competitive authoritarian regimes, but turnovers can boost trust among both incumbent and opposition supporters. We test this argument in the case of Zambia's 2021 election, a case where a ruling party lost despite electoral manipulation and strong control over the Election Management Body (EMB). Empirically, we leverage the first-ever panel survey carried out during Zambian elections. Comparing trust in elections before and after the election, we find that perceived election quality increased after the 2021 electoral turnover among both losers and winners. We find that trust in elections increased the most among winning opposition supporters. Moreover, despite the outgoing president's attempt to portray the election as fraudulent, losing ruling-party supporters also increased their trust in elections after the turnover. The study has important implications for the literature on democratic consolidation and institutional trust.

Autocratization Spillover: When Electing an Authoritarian Erodes Election Trust across Borders.

The rich literature on election trust predominantly uses domestic determinants as explanatory factors. But given the international nature of the autocratization wave, can an autocratization event across borders erode election trust? This article argues that an authoritarian's electoral success in a neighboring country can shatter democratic norms and demonstrate the viability of authoritarians. This autocratization event abroad can thus reduce citizens' principled support for democracy and its political system. Consequently, citizens across borders are less likely to see democratic elections as the "only game in town" and they have less trust in elections. To test this idea, I study the spillover effects of the 2018 Brazilian presidential election, in which an authoritarian candidate won decisively. Using the AmericasBarometer in Colombia that was launched throughout this election, I find that the election trust of Colombian citizens erodes after Jair Bolsonaro's electoral success. To probe into the mechanism, I uncover that his electoral victory leads Colombian citizens to be less supportive of the domestic political system and reduces their principled support for democracy. The causal mediation analysis demonstrates that these two variables mediate the effect of the authoritarian's electoral success on election trust. These findings on autocratization spillover effects illustrate the importance of external autocratization events in the study of election trust.

Vote Buying, Norms, Context, and Trust in Elections

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.

Public trust in elections: the case of Zanzibar

Public trust in elections: the case of Zanzibar

Conspiracy Thinking and Electoral Trust During Tumultuous Times: The Case of Israel

Abstract Recent research reveals the association between conspiracy thinking, i.e., one’s predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories, and trust in elections and election outcomes. This research, however, has thus far only examined single election cycles. In this letter, we examine whether citizens’ conspiracy thinking, across electoral winners and losers, predicts electoral mistrust in the polarized, crisis-laden state of Israel. We test our expectation using four nationally representative samples fielded in 2022—before the electoral campaign started, during the campaign, and after the November national election, when a change in government took place. We show that conspiracy thinking predicts electoral mistrust and that this effect is independent of the effect of being an electoral loser. We also demonstrate that losing or winning the election does not meaningfully moderate the effect of conspiracy thinking on electoral mistrust.

Who Buys the “Big Lie”? White Racial Grievance and Confidence in the Fairness of American Elections

AbstractElection skepticism has become a persistent feature of American politics since the Obama era. Such beliefs are most prevalent among White Americans and especially Republicans, and they are resistant to change. Conspiracy theory studies have shown that such beliefs are linked to feelings of ingroup victimization, at times associated with election loss. We draw on theories of White ingroup processes to argue that White grievance—the belief that Whites are victims of discrimination—is a key correlate of election skepticism among White Americans. White grievance was employed in the Obama era, but it was weaponized by Trump in the 2020 election. Our results based on four national datasets (2012–2020 ANES, 2021 YouGov) show that controlling for negative outgroup attitudes and other factors, White grievance is a significant predictor of election skepticism in all four studies. In 2020, the effect is stronger among White Republicans and independents. We also show that White identity/consciousness has the opposite effect, generally boosting trust in elections. Furthermore, a lagged dependent variable model using the 2016–2020 ANES panel shows that White grievance remains significant even after an LDV is included in the model.

Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections by Sarah Sunn Bush and Lauren Prather

Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections <i>by Sarah Sunn Bush and Lauren Prather</i>

Trust in Elections

Abstract The sometimes violent movement to reject the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election draws our attention to the topic of trust in the institution of American election administration. An examination of this topic must make an important distinction between trust in elections (a psychological construct) and the trustworthiness of election results (a legal construct). The history of election administration in the United States is full of examples of efforts to increase the trustworthiness of elections to ensure that results are based on fair and competent administration. The resilience of these efforts was on display following the 2020 election, as formal institutions rejected claims that the election was fraudulent. Still, the past two decades have seen a decline in trust in American elections that has primarily been driven by a slow but steady decline in trust among Republicans. Surprisingly, the increased polarization in trust most recently has been due more to Democrats suddenly becoming more trusting. Election officials must continue to try to overcome attacks on trust in the system, but it is unclear how long they can sustain the legal system guaranteeing free and fair elections without broad-based public trust in how we administer elections.

Introduction

Introduction

Are elite cues necessary to drive the “Winner Effect” on trust in elections?

A rigorous literature analyzing elections in the United States, in established European democracies, and in the newer democracies of Eastern Europe and Latin America have shown that voters on the losing side of a campaign exhibit less trust in elections and faith in democratic legitimacy. Those who experience the “winner effect,” by contrast, report greater system support and belief in the integrity of the election. What drives this effect? Is it the election result itself that leads to a direct change in mass opinion or is it the elite messages – including charges of voter fraud – that often follow a contest? To disentangle the impact of mass mood from leadership cues as the mechanisms behind the winner effect, we use a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design in a recent American election in which the leading candidate on the losing side did not claim to have lost because of vote fraud. We gathered parallel survey samples in the two days leading up to the polls closing and then the following two days once the definitive results became clear. Even in the absence of elite claims of vote fraud, we see strong and immediate shifts in mass views. Once the results became clear, those who supported the losing side became significantly less likely to trust that votes were counted correctly or to be satisfied with the election process, while trust and support for the process rose from pre-to post-election for voters on the winning side. We contribute to this literature by demonstrating that elite cues are not a necessary condition to drive the winner effect; it can be generated by mass attitudinal shifts that follow from the revelation of an election result alone.

Auditing Google's Search Headlines as a Potential Gateway to Misleading Content

The prevalence and spread of online misinformation during the 2020 US presidential election served to perpetuate a false belief in widespread election fraud. Though much research has focused on how social media platforms connected people to election-related rumors and conspiracy theories, less is known about the search engine pathways that linked users to news content with the potential to undermine trust in elections. In this paper, we present novel data related to the content of political headlines during the 2020 US election period. We scraped over 800,000 headlines from Google's search engine results pages (SERP) in response to 20 election-related keywords—10 general (e.g., "Ballots") and 10 conspiratorial (e.g., "Voter fraud")—when searched from 20 cities across 16 states. We present results from qualitative coding of 5,600 headlines focused on the prevalence of delegitimizing information. Our results reveal that videos (as compared to stories, search results, and advertisements) are the most problematic in terms of exposing users to delegitimizing headlines. We also illustrate how headline content varies when searching from a swing state, adopting a conspiratorial search keyword, or reading from media domains with higher political bias. We conclude with policy recommendations on data transparency that allow researchers to continue to monitor search engines during elections.

10 - Interrogating the Cost of Digital Technology and Trust in Elections in Africa: The Nigerian Perspective

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The adoption of technology in electoral democracy in Africa has been on the increase. The introduction of technology has its positive consideration but it also comes with cost and trust implications, which is a paradox. This study is a descriptive work which made use of both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Electionadministrationtheorywasadopted.Toimproveontheuseofdigital technologies, Africans should be mindful of the failure of digital checks and balances that often render an electoral process even more vulnerable to rigging than it was before. In designing new systems for election management, this article argues that Africans should look inward and integrate the new technologies into relevant environmental and cultural settings in order to reduce the cost while improving on the trust of electorates.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Felicia Osondu Okwueze, Department of Public Administration and Local Government, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. Email: osondu.okwueze@unn.edu.ng&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Perception of Electoral Integrity, Trust in Elections, and the Conditional Role of the Understanding of Democracy: Addressing the “Mexican Paradox”

Objective/Context: People usually associate democracy with different sorts of values and desirable outcomes. An informed understanding of democracy, however, requires that the public be aware that democracy is a regime in which elections are free and fair, the government is bound by the rule of law, and citizens have equal political rights and civil freedoms. This article is a contribution to the scholarship on the public understanding of democracy as a liberal-electoral regime. The central claim is that an informed notion of democracy reinforces the relationship between perception of integrity in the electoral process and confidence in elections as a core institution in the political system. Methodology: Using survey data, the empirical analysis focuses on the case of Mexico, where several observers identify a crucial puzzle: voters systematically distrust elections that are widely regarded as free and fair. The analysis is replicated in other Latin American countries as well. Conclusions: As would be expected, voters are more likely to trust elections when they perceive that ballots are counted fairly, electoral officials are honest, media coverage is balanced, or women have equal opportunities to run for office. The results confirm, furthermore, that perception of electoral integrity is associated with a greater degree of trust in elections on the condition that voters understand democracy as a liberal regime. Originality: This research shows that an accurate understanding of democracy enhances citizens’ abilities to appreciate the link between electoral integrity and the trustworthiness of elections.

Does fraud trump partisanship? The impact of contentious elections on voter confidence

ABSTRACTFraudulent elections can reduce citizen trust in elections and other political institutions. But what about the impact of contentious elections that resolve successfully, leading to democratizing change? Do national movements toward democracy trump individual experiences with electoral manipulation? Using public opinion survey data collected before and after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, we evaluate changes in voter confidence in electoral practices, political institutions, and democracy. Although national trends show increased voter confidence overall, subnational variation suggests pervasive partisan differences in opinions about election quality and institutional confidence. Remarkably, we find that direct exposure to fraud matters far less than anticipated; voters who were personally exposed to fraud felt no more or less confident than their co-partisans. We show that partisanship and the national electoral context may interact in ways that complicate the effects of democratizing elections, suggesting important avenues for future research.

Public trust in manipulated elections: The role of election administration and media freedom

As multiparty elections have become a global norm, scholars and policy experts regard public trust in elections as vital for regime legitimacy. However, very few cross-national studies have examined the consequences of electoral manipulation, including the manipulation of election administration and the media, on citizens' trust in elections. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how autonomy of election management bodies (EMBs) and media freedom individually and conjointly shape citizens’ trust in elections. Citizens are more likely to express confidence in elections when EMBs display de-facto autonomy, and less likely to do so when mass media disseminate information independent of government control. Additionally, we suggest that EMB autonomy may not have a positive effect on public trust in elections if media freedom is low. Empirical findings based on recent survey data on public trust in 47 elections and expert data on de-facto EMB autonomy and media freedom support our hypotheses.

The impact of descriptive representation on “persistent” gender gaps: political engagement and political trust in Uruguay

ABSTRACTPersistent gender gaps in political engagement, which have been observed across the globe, continue to puzzle researchers. Given that the heightened legislative presence of a previously under-represented group has the potential to boost political involvement among citizens, this paper addresses the question of how women’s increased descriptive representation can shape political engagement and trust in the democratic process. The adoption of a gender quota in Uruguay allowed us to prognosticate a rise in women’s descriptive representation following the October 2014 elections. Our two-wave panel survey polled 1200 Uruguayan citizens immediately prior to the elections when the gender quota was first applied and shortly thereafter. Our results reveal that “persistent” gender gaps are not insurmountable. After the election, women are more likely to trust in political institutions than men, and previous gender gaps in political interest, understanding of the issues, and trust in elections dissipate.

The Effect of Political Trust in National Elections Under Unified and Divided Government

Under what conditions is public distrust in government electorally consequential, and whom does it harm? The Republican Party appears to think that stoking the fire of public cynicism towards “Washington politicians” will benefit the party’s chances in the 2016 elections both for the White House and for Congress. Yet the academic literature is less clear. On the one hand, Hetherington (1999) and Hetherington and Rudolph (2015) suggest that individuals’ distrust in government reflects displeasure with the incumbent party in the White House. If voters go to the polls looking to hold the president’s party responsible for government’s lack of trustworthiness, the strategy of current GOP candidates may indeed be fruitful, given that Barack Obama is president. On the other hand, these electoral expectations seem a bit odd given that temporal variation in public trust in government is driven primarily by citizens’ attitudes towards Congress, not the president (e.g., Keele 2007). If voters go to the polls looking to hold the party that controls Congress responsible for government’s lack of trustworthiness, Republican efforts to foster distrust in government may backfire, given that their party currently presides over the legislative branch. In addition to these two alternative hypotheses, this study explores a third: that voters look to hold both branches of government responsible for governmental untrustworthiness. In this case, the effect of trust in elections will depend on whether party control of the two branches is unified or divided. Under unified government, distrust would be expected to harm the electoral prospects of the sole ruling party in both presidential and congressional races. Under divided government, voters would have to decide whether to hold neither party more responsible than the other, or hold the president’s party responsible in the presidential contest and the congressional majority party responsible in congressional races. No existing studies attempt to distinguish among these several hypotheses. Using individual level data, this study finds that distrust in government affects both presidential and congressional races. However, these effects are felt mainly during unified government, with candidates from the ruling party being held accountable in both congressional and presidential elections. The effects are much more muted during divided government, when responsibility is more evenly shared across both parties in both types of contests.

Public Trust in Elections: The Role of Election Administration Autonomy and Media Freedom

As multiparty elections have become a global norm, scholars and policy experts regard public trust in elections as vital for regime legitimacy. However, very few cross-national studies have examined the consequences of electoral manipulation, including the manipulation of election administration and the media, on citizens’ trust in elections. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how autonomy of election management bodies (EMBs) and media freedom individually and conjointly shape citizens’ trust in elections. Citizens are more likely to express confidence in elections when EMBs display de-facto autonomy, and less likely to do so when media entities disseminate information independent of government control. Additionally, we suggest that EMB autonomy may not have a positive effect on public trust in elections if media freedom is low. Empirical findings based on recent survey data on public trust in 47 elections and expert data on de-facto EMB autonomy and media freedom support our hypotheses.