July 11, 2023
Only 44% of the public has a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that the votes in the 2024 presidential election will be counted accurately.
Republicans tend to express less confidence in the nation’s voting systems and more concern about voter fraud than Democrats. Democrats are more concerned about voter suppression and gerrymandering.
College educated adults have more confidence in the accuracy of the 2024 presidential election vote count than those with less formal education.
Sixty-five percent of adults view gerrymandering, the practice of states drawing legislative districts that intentionally favor one political party, as a major problem. Four in 10 cite voter suppression, or people who are eligible not being allowed to vote, as a major problem. And 36% say the same for voter fraud, or people voting who are not eligible.
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say both gerrymandering and voter suppression are major problems. Republicans are more likely to consider voter fraud a major problem. Just over half of Republicans also think gerrymandering is a major problem.
There is widespread support for requiring all voters to provide photo identification to vote. Fifty-five percent favor automatic registration of adult citizens when they get drivers licenses or other state identification. About half favor same day registration or allowing mail-in ballots without requiring a reason.
Consistent with their concerns about voter fraud, 87% of Republicans favor requiring voters to provide photo identification. While significantly fewer, 60% of Democrats also favor ID policies. And consistent with their concerns about voter suppression, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to favor policies that reduce barriers to voting like allowing same day voter registration, mail-in ballots without a justification, and automatically registering citizens to vote when they get a state issued ID.
When it comes to how people vote, the public is far more confident in electronic voting machines that provide paper receipts than those without paper receipts (53% extremely or very confident that votes would be counted accurately vs. 26%). Forty-two percent are extremely or very confident that paper ballots that are scanned into a machine will be counted accurately. Opinions are divided on the security of mail-in paper ballots; 30% are very confident, 33% are somewhat confident, and 36% are not very confident.
Democrats are more confident in all methods of voting. Republicans are particularly concerned with electronic voting machines that do not provide paper receipts as well as paper ballots that are mailed in.
The nationwide poll was conducted June 22-26, 2023 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,220 adults. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.9 percentage points.
- Suggested Citation: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (June 2023). “Partisan views of the electoral system.” https://apnorc.org/projects/partisan-views-of-the-electoral-system/
