Can Public Information Campaigns Restore Trust in American Elections Across Polarized State and Party Lines?

Abstract

The Constitution empowers states to manage elections, yet this aspect of federalism poses formidable challenges with overlapping geographic and partisan divisions. We first provide descriptive evidence that, even though nonpartisan election officials use similar methods to protect ballot-counting across the country, Republican voters nationwide report low levels of trust in the elections run by the blue state of California, just as Democrats are less trusting of elections in the red state of Texas. Could a public information campaign providing factual messages from election officials help to restore trust across party lines? We report the results of novel survey experiments that expose respondents in one state to messages produced by election officials in another state. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all become more trusting once they are exposed to information about other states’ election protections. Our findings suggest that a robust public information campaign by state election officials could mitigate polarized trust in election integrity.