Electoral Crisis Communications: Combatting Disinformation & the Contest for Electoral Legitimacy

Abstract

In the age of weaponized disinformation, the question for democracies is not merely who will win an election, but whether the outcome will be accepted as legitimate. To assess the challenge faced by U.S. electoral officials in convincing the public of the security of election procedure we conducted a survey experiment on a national sample of 4987 U.S. adults in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Subjects were exposed to claims about voter fraud as well as crisis communication counter-messaging attributed to election officials. We find that regardless of the messaging strategy, subjects were unmoved by the counter-messaging with partisanship being a clear predictor of increased skepticism towards election security. Our findings illustrate the difficulties election officials face in convincing the publics about election legitimacy and highlight the systemic dangers posed by electoral disinformation.