Under Review

“Trust in the Count: Improving Voter Confidence with Post-Election Audits” (with Jacob Jaffe, Alejandro Flores, Samuel Baltz, and Charles Stewart III; Revise & Resubmit, Public Opinion Quarterly)

Abstract: Post-election audits are thought to bolster voter confidence in elections, but it is unclear which aspects of audits drive public trust. Using pre-registered 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 suggest that election administrators can strengthen voter confidence by making audits as transparent as possible.

Working Papers

“The Cost of Electoral Confidence” (with Alejandro Flores and Charles Stewart III)

“Legislating Democracy: When State Legislators Change Access to the Ballot”

“Where We Vote: The Changing Landscape of Where Americans Cast Votes’’ (with Alejandro Flores)

“The Party of Law and Order: Issue Ownership in Local Sheriff and Prosecutor Elections” (with Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski)