(Press-News.org)
In recent U.S. elections, results often took days to finalize, fueling voter distrust in the electoral process and ballot outcomes. Now, research from the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at UC San Diego shows that a simple, proactive message from election officials – ahead of Election Night – can effectively reduce this distrust.
The study, published in PNAS Nexus, reveals that when voters are informed in advance that counting ballots accurately takes time and there are security measures in place, their trust in the process remains steady, even when results are delayed.
“Election officials can reassure voters that delayed election results aren’t a sign of fraud, but they should proactively communicate this before the election,” said Mackenzie Lockhart, the study’s first and corresponding author now a postdoctoral scholar at Yale University, who worked on the research while a political science graduate student at UC San Diego.
The research team ran a survey experiment with 10,000 Americans in 2023 to measure how trust in election results is affected by delays in reporting. Participants either watched a 40-second video produced by the Arizona Secretary of State that explained why counting ballots takes time, or they saw no such message. Then, they were told about the winner of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, with some being informed that the results took six days to finalize.
Those who heard about the delay but did not see the video were 6.5 percentage points less trusting of the results than those who heard no information about a delay. However, among those who watched the video, trust only decreased by 2.6 percentage points.
The study demonstrates that even a brief, low-cost message from election officials can help maintain trust when election results are delayed. This kind of communication is particularly crucial in politically polarized environments where voters are already skeptical and trust is fragile.
“Like Arizona’s Secretary of State, election officials around the country are using innovative communication strategies to explain to the public how they protect the integrity of the vote,” said study co-author Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Center and professor of political science at UC San Diego. “The Yankelovich Center is partnering with many of them to conduct rigorous tests of what messages work, what don’t work, and what works best.”
The PNAS Nexus paper is titled "Voters Distrust Delayed Election Results, But a Prebunking Message Inoculates Against Distrust.” In addition to Lockhart and Kousser, the other coauthors on the study are: Jennifer Gaudette, Seth J. Hill, and Laura Uribe from UC San Diego and Mindy Romero of the University of Southern California.
Learn more about the Yankelovich Center's program on Building Election Trust: Enhancing Election Official Capacities Through Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships.
END
Election officials can boost voter trust in delayed results with early communication
2024-10-15
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Rice-led research will leverage responsible AI to enhance coastal communities’ severe storm response
2024-10-15
HOUSTON – (Oct. 15, 2024) – An interdisciplinary team of Rice University engineers and collaborators led by Jamie Padgett has won $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve the safety and resiliency of coastal communities facing compounded risk from hazardous weather events.
Padgett, together with Ben Hu and Avantika Gori at Rice, David Retchless at Texas A&M University at Galveston and community partners, will leverage responsible artificial intelligence (AI), hazard and resilience models ...
Honey bees in demand: New contract strategies to support pollination services
2024-10-15
URBANA, Ill. — As the world’s native bee populations are declining, crop production requiring pollinators increasingly relies on commercial pollination services. In the U.S., the beekeeping industry is in great demand, and truckloads of bee colonies travel the country to accommodate crop growers. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at pollination contracts between beekeepers and California almond growers, exploring clauses that could make the agreements more appealing for both parties.
“There's about 1.3 million acres of almond trees ...
New climate change health research center under development at the University of Cincinnati
2024-10-15
Climate change presents far-reaching implications for the planet’s weather, sea levels, animals and food supply. Now experts are addressing climate change’s adverse effects on human health.
“We need to try to reduce risks for people, especially vulnerable populations,” said Ardythe Morrow, PhD, MSc, professor and director of the Epidemiology division of the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
To that end, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health has awarded a three-year, $4 million ...
Educational psychologists can play a part in fighting TikTok mental health and neurodiversity misinformation
2024-10-15
Educational psychologists could help to fight mental health and neurodiversity misinformation on TikTok as more young people self-diagnose based on poor quality content on the platform, a new study says.
Growing numbers of young people may be labelling themselves as being neurodivergent or having mental health conditions after engaging with information online, some of which may be inaccurate.
Educational psychologists and their professional bodies could engage with TikTok by creating accessible evidence-based content about neurodiversity and mental health on the platform.
Their assessments could also ...
Winners announced in $300,000 pediatric medical device competition focused on pediatric cardiology
2024-10-15
WASHINGTON (Oct. 15, 2024)—Six medical technology innovators focused on pediatric cardiology were selected to receive grants of $50,000 each in the “Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!TM” competition in Toronto. The funds will help awardees bring their devices to the market and improve care for children with heart conditions.
The awardees, selected from a highly competitive field of ten finalists, are:
Bloom Standard, Minneapolis—Autonomous, hands-free ultrasound
Compremium AG, Bern, Switzerland—Noninvasive central venous pressure estimation for pediatric patients
Massachusetts ...
New app performs real-time, full-body motion capture with a smartphone
2024-10-15
Northwestern University engineers have developed a new system for full-body motion capture — and it doesn’t require specialized rooms, expensive equipment, bulky cameras or an array of sensors.
Instead, it requires a simple mobile device.
Called MobilePoser, the new system leverages sensors already embedded within consumer mobile devices, including smartphones, smart watches and wireless earbuds. Using a combination of sensor data, machine learning and physics, MobilePoser accurately ...
Immune signatures may predict adverse events from immunotherapy
2024-10-15
Distinct immune “signatures” in patients who develop adverse events while taking immunotherapy for cancer may help oncologists identify patients at risk and treat them early to prevent serious side effects, suggests a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
The study, published Oct. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, is the largest to date to look at immune signatures in patients with a range of cancers. It included a diverse sample of 111 patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors ...
UTA invests in cutting-edge genomic research technology
2024-10-15
The North Texas Genome Center (NTGC) at UT Arlington is getting an upgrade in the form of a next-generation genetic sequencer that will allow researchers to study genetic links between health and disease at a large scale. The new $1 million instrument, the only one of its kind in North Texas, will allow faculty and students to more deeply analyze rare genetic variants, an important step in discovering new insights for the future of health care.
“I’m excited to be able to expand and upgrade the technological capabilities of the North Texas Genome Center, a collaborative ...
Male mice use female mice to distract aggressors and avoid conflict
2024-10-15
A research group led by Joshua Neunuebel at the University of Delaware, USA, tracked the behavior of mice using machine learning to understand how they handle aggressive behavior from other mice. The researchers’ findings, published on October 15th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, show that male mice deescalate aggressive encounters by running over to a female mouse to distract the aggressive male mouse.
The researchers recorded groups of two male and two female mice interacting over five hours. Like many other animals, mice have social hierarchies, and in almost each group recorded, one male was always significantly more aggressive towards the other.
Social interactions ...
19th century French psychiatrists: Unsung heroes of modern melancholia research
2024-10-15
In an era where mental health awareness is at the forefront of public discourse, a new historical review is shedding light on the often-overlooked French contributions to our understanding of depression. Published in Genomic Psychiatry, the study by Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler and Virginia Justis of Virginia Commonwealth University examines a seminal 1897 French monograph that helped shape modern concepts of melancholia and depression.
The review focuses on "La Mélancolie" by Jacques Roubinovitch ...