Public Perceptions of Voter Fraud and Election Confidence

Four days before the 2020 general election, Brian Gaines, professor of political science at the University of Illinois, presented survey data on Americans' beliefs about election fraud and confidence that votes are counted correctly. He walked through state-by-state findings from the Survey of the Performance of American Elections, compared Illinois to other states, and argued that both the claim of rampant fraud and the claim of none are exaggerations. Q&A covered voter ID laws, the pandemic's effect on mail voting, the Electoral College and the national popular vote compact, and the 2004-2006 Washington gubernatorial recount. Held online, in the fall 2020 "State of the Democracy" series.