Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore

Candidate signs during the first day of early primary voting on July 7, 2022, in Silver Spring, Md. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

As the U.S. moves closer to the 2022 midterm elections, a sizable number of Americans express a lack of confidence in the accuracy of the vote count.

That distrust is built largely on the widespread – and false – assertion that Donald Trump was re-elected in the 2020 presidential election, and that Joe Biden’s win was based on fraud. Despite the 2020 election being the most secure in American history, and the courts and U.S. Department of Justice uncovering no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome, consistently about 70% of Republican voters suspect election fraud, and overall mistrust in the neutrality of the election process remains high.