Between October 25 and November 4, 2024, The Elections Group's research partners conducted a national survey about post-election audit communications.
More than 6,000 Americans participated in this survey designed to measure the impact of various visual audit summaries on election confidence.
The research team set out to answer three questions.
THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. When election officials communicate to the public about key aspects of post-election audits, can this build confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the vote?
2. What aspects of the audits are most effective to emphasize: process or results?
3. Which members of the public respond the most to this information?
HOW THE SURVEY WORKED
The research team explored these questions using a large-scale survey, including a survey experiment that randomly assigned people to view a visual summarizing real data from an example jurisdiction's post-election audit — audit process or audit results or both — or a “control” visual about recycling.
CONFIDENCE IS JURISDICTION SPECIFIC
Audits impact trust in the elections that they audit, it seems.
Confidence that votes in the example jurisdiction would be counted as intended was higher for those who viewed the example jurisdiction's audit summary.
But this effect did not "spill over" to impact trust in elections for their locality, their state or the national elections.
MOST IMPACTFUL: AUDIT PROCESS
The most effective visual was the one that focused on the audit process and broke it down into easy-to-follow steps. The least effective was the visual that focused on audit results — although it still brought a statistically and substantively significant impact on trust.
Thank you to Cheryl Boudreau of the University of California, Davis; Thad Kousser of the University of California, San Diego; Jennifer Merolla of the University of California, Riverside; and Mackenzie Lockhart of Yale University for their work to answer these research questions.
Download the visual audit summary templates used in this survey, add your audit information and then share the communications with your voters to boost election confidence in your jurisdiction.
Credits:
Created with images by Kunalai - "Election workers counting paper ballots, focused and meticulous, stacks of ballots on tables, ensuring accuracy and transparency" • FR Design - "Question mark icon special blue banner background" • Looker_Studio - "Customer service evaluation concept. smiling Asian female Is using a smartphone And she is pressing face emoticon smiling in satisfaction on virtual touch screen." • farland9 - "confidence meter rising as speaker progresses, symbolizing building confidence during presentations." • nilanka - "3D red location pin marking a specific location on the city map" • MrPanya - "Certification Concept, Compliance with Laws, Regulations and Standards, Quality Control Management and Inspection Process, Quality Assurance, Compliance with Regulations and Standards" • Syda Productions - "international group of people over american flag"