Shocker: Nearly Half of Americans Think Election Counts Will Be Wrong

X Facebook Email Flipboard Pinterest Print Reddit

A new poll provides evidence that there is an increasing lack of faith in American democracy. According to a new NPR/Marist poll nearly half of American voters do not believe that their votes will be counted accurately in November’s midterm elections. In addition to that bad news, nearly 40% do not believe that U.S. elections are “fair.”

“In a new NPR/Marist poll, nearly half of respondents lacked faith that votes would be counted accurately in the upcoming midterm elections.”

As might be expected, nonwhite voters, women and individuals who identify as Democrats have much greater doubts about the fairness of elections when compared to self-identifying Republicans, 91 percent of whom believe elections are fair.

This shows that race, sex and party identification are all major factors in determining whether or not an individual voter has confidence in America’s democratic system.

The poll showed that overall 47 percent of all respondents think it is either “likely” or “very likely” that not all votes will actually be counted in November. And in a disturbing finding, non-white voters have even less faith: almost 60 percent of such voters believe there will be an incorrect tabulation of voting results on November 6th.

“On a whole this is a pretty lousy report card on the state of American elections,” said Dr. Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll.

Concerning the fairness of U.S. elections in general, there was a big “gender gap.” Nearly half of the women surveyed (47%) said that they have little or no trust that elections are fair. This compares to less than one-third of men surveyed who said they believe American elections are unfair.

And showing the huge differences between the two parties, just 9 percent of Republicans say elections aren’t fair, compared to 48 percent of Democrats who feel that way.

Natalie Adona, a senior research associate at the Democracy Fund said that the big difference between Democrats and Republicans is due to the fact that Republicans currently control Congress and the White House, as well as most state governments. “People generally have more faith in the electoral process if they have been successful in winning recent elections,” Adona said.

Nonwhite voters also report standing in line longer and traveling farther to polling places than white voters. Forty-six percent percent of these voters said elections were unfair, while only 33 percent of white voters think elections were unfair.

“There is a gap between white and nonwhite attitudes about a number of aspects of elections,” Adona said. “It’s not surprising to me, especially folks who come from communities that have faced barriers to voting, that they would perceive elections a bit differently than most Americans do.”

Poll respondent LaDonna Bonner, a 47-year-old African-American woman in California said she didn’t think elections were obviously biased against people of color in the U.S.. However, she said that things like transportation to the polls, and getting time off from work are usually more difficult than for many white voters.

“Like, if it takes a day off from work to vote — will I have a job when I get back?” she said. “Those kind of issues may prevent people from voting. But the actual process of voting, I don’t think anyone can really tell ‘oh this is white person’s ballot’ or ‘this is a black person’s ballot.'”

Overall, this survey shows that there is a disturbing lack of confidence in American voting processes. This is something that governments at all levels need to work on. There has been a trend in recent years for the party in power to try to suppress voter turnout, which is undemocratic, and this must change.

Author
Recent Posts

Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.