How to Restore Trust in Elections

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows that almost 60% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in the United States. And one of the basic cornerstones of a democracy—electing our government representatives at every level—is suffering.

Put simply, a significant number of Americans don’t trust that the outcome of the upcoming federal election will be valid. While a Bipartisan Policy Center poll in February 2024 found that 69% of respondents were either very confident or somewhat confident that their votes would be counted accurately at the national level, the findings mean some 3 in 10 Americans were less than confident that their votes would be counted accurately. That is a sizable portion of the population and shows how deeply mistrust has taken hold for many people.

But despite that measure of concern, the Center’s poll also offers some guidance on how to rebuild trust. It found that the closer an election is held to home, the more confident Americans are: The poll found that 74% of respondents are confident that votes will be counted accurately in their community compared with 64% believing that votes would be accurately counted throughout the country.

The findings aren’t an outlier. Going into the 2022 midterm elections, Pew Research Center found that 70% of registered voters believed that elections would be well run at the national level, and that number increased to 90% when respondents were asked about their expectations on how elections in their community would be administered.

The confidence gap between how elections are conducted at the community, and national levels is an opportunity to restore trust in our elections—not just in the November elections, but in the coming years. Restoration of trust will take time.  And over that time it’ll be essential to educate voters on how—and how well—America’s election process works.

The facts show that elections are well run in the United States. Today, more than 10,000 jurisdictions accommodate more than 160 million registered voters in school gymnasiums, community centers, town halls, and houses of worship all across the country. And local election offices are overseen by trained, dedicated public servants and supported by volunteer poll workers who are neighbors of those voting.

These events happen at the community level. No single point of access exists; no grand “election office” can be hacked. Rather, numerous measures, devised by states and localities, ensure that the process is fair and accurate. It begins with registration and improved methods for removing people from the rolls when they move or otherwise become ineligible to vote, continues with testing of voting equipment and the monitoring of polls, and ends with paper trails to allow audits that ensure the results have been tabulated correctly.

Let’s look at these safeguards more closely: Every state has a process for testing the equipment used for voting and tabulation before elections to verify that it’s working. Representatives of the political parties or the public also observe the polls and monitor vote counting in many states. Election officials must follow strict chain of custody procedures to document the location of the ballots and voting equipment, with seals and signatures required at various steps. And federal law requires that the ballots and other materials be retained for 22 months should a recount or investigation be necessary—and voting systems must produce a paper record for such purposes.

In the past two decades, voting itself has become easier, more convenient, and transparent. Nearly all of states—47 to be precise—offer early in-person voting and/or mail-in ballots. But regardless of the voting method, in 2024, 95% of voters will most likely vote on a system with a voter-verifiable paper trail.

The election system is sound.

So what causes the mistrust, and what effect is it having on our elections? The Bipartisan Policy Center poll says 72% of Americans are concerned about inaccurate or misleading information.  And it’s not hard to see why—the COVID-19 pandemic and last-minute changes to election policies and practices, with insufficient time to educate the public stoked by a steady increase in political polarization, created unprecedented levels of mistrust in the 2020 election results.

As elected officials and career election administrators grappled with the threat of contagion, 23 states made it easier to vote remotely. States as diverse as Alabama, Kentucky, New York, and West Virginia instituted vote-by-mail procedures for the first time, and some decided to mail vote-by-mail applications or ballots. And when allegations of fraud or “election rigging” poured in after votes were counted, amplified by partisans and the media, it took many months for the courts to rule that the elections had been conducted fairly.

In the elections since 2020, many election offices have faced an influx of legal challenges to voting procedures often based on inaccurate allegations, which are complicating their efforts to maintain the integrity and efficiency of the electoral process.

By May 2024, election workers were also reporting facing violent threats, harassment, or abuse, according to a poll conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice. They are leaving their jobs at a rate that grew from 28% in 2004 to 39% in 2022 across all states, in competitive and noncompetitive districts, conservative and liberal-leaning ones, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

So mistrust has led to new stress on the election system. But this new attention and concern also present an opportunity: We can, and should, improve our electoral process by embracing new tools and heightened transparency to earn trust. 

While we have lost key top election officials in many states, they are being replaced by experienced workers in those offices. Maintaining that flow of qualified workers is paramount. To assist, the Bipartisan Policy Center and The Elections Group formed a council to help with recruitment, retention, and training designed to support a sustainable talent pipeline.

We also must empower local election officials to do their jobs well, supporting them with what they need. For example, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a bipartisan, cross-state partnership tool that The Pew Charitable Trusts helped states create, is designed to keep voter lists up to date by sharing data across states to ensure that voters don’t appear twice and that rolls don’t include voters who have moved, died, or are ineligible—reducing the burden on election workers.

Risk-limiting audits (RLAs), which use validated statistical methods to examine a sample of paper ballots and can document the validity of reported election results or trigger a recount before the results are certified, are another tool. These audits provide assurance that the final tally will match the number of ballots cast. Colorado conducted the first RLA statewide in 2017, followed by states like Rhode Island and Virginia.

Policymakers and the public have an appropriate role to play in oversight of our elections. And valuable contributions can be made by well-trained election monitors such as those from the Carter Center, which this year is supporting coalitions of nonpartisan citizens in Montana and New Mexico to observe and report on the November election.

Given the trust voters have in elections closest to them, local leaders also can perform a tremendous service by acting as validators of the election progress. A word from a community leader—a popular mayor, police chief, or religious leader—about the mechanics of voting, the tabulation process, and security measures can go a long way. They can also mitigate voter concerns by highlighting authoritative information sources, such as independent, nonpartisan research teams like Utah’s Sutherland Institute and MIT Election Data + Science Lab, and instill confidence in election officials.

Educating and informing journalists is another crucial piece, particularly in the current environment of reduced media resources and budgets. The Knight Election Hub helps newsrooms, publishers, editors, writers, videographers, podcasters, and other storytellers by providing free resources and services for the 2024 elections at the federal, state, and local levels.

And in what is inevitably a crowded environment of information, the Voting Information Project (VIP)—which Pew helped create in 2008—offers online tools so that voters can find polling locations, ballot information, early voting guidelines, and any changes in election policies sourced directly from state election offices. Building on its longtime partnership with Google to ensure accurate information in search results, VIP also has recently expanded its efforts in a partnership with the AI company Anthropic to combat the danger of misinformation driven by artificial intelligence.

To ensure safety, election officials can engage with law enforcement early. The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections has been convening election officials and law enforcement for such purposes, with Georgia leading the charge. In July, the state mandated election security training for law enforcement officers. Recruits in police academies also get a course on election laws, learning about election interference, threats, de-escalation tactics, and how to protect voters from intimidation.

Embracing these practices and other impartial tools should be one piece of rebuilding confidence in the electoral process. But on a grander level it involves local and state election workers and communities being transparent when mistakes occur, rolling up proverbial sleeves, and doing the work.

An example of that was in May when the Gary R. Herbert Institute for Public Policy at Utah Valley University, the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins, and the Sutherland Institute, a public policy think tank based in Salt Lake City, held an election trust forum to explore how to restore faith in the election process. The forum’s joint statement acknowledged that “as conservatives, we recognize the damage caused by the drumbeat of falsehoods repeated about the 2020 elections, largely undisputed and noncontroversial” and that “there are still many voters who don’t believe they can have confidence in the 2024 elections.”

Also seeking to restore faith, a group of Republican secretaries of state, including Idaho’s Phil McGrane, Kentucky’s Michael Adams, Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, and Kansas’ Scott Schwab, along with Utah Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson came together to speak out last December. There is plenty of blame to go around, they believe, thanks to a “toxic stew of disinformation, misinformation, and deliberate lies for profit or political advantage. … Both parties have helped weaken trust in our electoral system. Both must help restore it,” they said in a statement.

These leaders demonstrated a willingness to hear voters’ experiences and consider reforms. It will require this kind of dialogue to take a system that is working well and make it even better. Restoring the trust that has been lost by a large number of Americans is essential for all of us, for we all share in the health and future of our democracy. And our democracy rests on trusting that our votes count. 

Michael Caudell-Feagan is executive vice president and chief program officer of The Pew Charitable Trusts and oversees the Election Trust Initiative, a Pew subsidiary.