County Election Administration Promotes Voter Confidence in US Elections for Election Losers

Does high-quality county election administration (CEA)—the center of US elections—add to public confidence in US elections, including among election losers? No study has examined how CEA quality throughout the US and over time affects this outcome. Specifically, this study evaluates the hypotheses that, from 2012 to 2022, higher quality CEA leads to higher public confidence in election results and enhances this confidence among election losers. These hypotheses are evaluated using the new CEA (Ritter & Tolbert, 2024) index. Using the Survey of the Performance of American Elections data (from 2012 to 2022), coupled with multi-level modeling, this study evaluates the impact of CEA on public confidence for election winners and losers. Ultimately, this study finds that higher quality CEA helps close the confidence gap between election losers and winners.