New UCSD center’s ambitious goal: Rebuilding trust in elections

UC San Diego on Thursday announced the formation of the nonpartisan Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections, intended to rebuild American confidence in elections.

The Election Trust Initiative seeded the center at UCSD with a nearly $2.5 million grant. It will be co-directed by Thad Kousser, professor in the Department of Political Science in the School of Social Sciences and Lauren Prather, associate professor of political science at the School of Global Policy and Strategy.

They will lead an effort to build sustained partnerships with election administrators across the country, test new ways to increase transparency and share strategies with the goal of “growing lasting trust across the political spectrum.”

“This center is about finding practical solutions that help election officials build confidence among voters and ensure that trust endures beyond a single election cycle,” Kousser said.

Prather said the effort is urgent as skepticism in the integrity of elections has deepened in the past several decades.

“We have a rare opportunity to build trust that lasts,” she said. “Our research will help ensure Americans’ faith in elections is grounded in facts and transparency – not just in who wins or loses.”

According to UCSD, to accomplish this, over the next four years the center and its staff will:

• Test transparency initiatives, such as public tours of election facilities, live-streamed ballot counting, audits and ride-alongs with election officials, to “evaluate their impact on voter trust.”
• Evaluate communications strategies that “explain election safeguards in clear, accessible ways,” with special attention to reaching a broad range of communities through trusted community messengers.
• Build national partnerships with election officials, nonprofit organizations and policymakers to “ensure findings are applied in practice.”
• Expand opportunities for new leaders to contribute to the emerging field of election science that “seeks to understand how electoral systems work, as well as how to improve their fairness, efficiency and public confidence.”

The co-directors are not new to the field. Kousser has led multi-university studies on building voter confidence, with findings presented to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and published in academic journals.

Prather is the author of “Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections,” winner of the American Political Science Association’s Best Book in Foreign Policy Award.

“Public confidence in elections is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy, but we’ve seen that voters can lose that trust,” said Ashley Quarcoo, executive director of the Election Trust Initiative. “The Center for Trusted and Transparent Elections will bring together researchers and election officials to identify proven ways to strengthen voter confidence, regardless of who or what is on the ballot.”

The center will connect UCSD’s existing network of political science scholars and national partnerships as well as drawing on the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research, which Kousser co-directs and which has conducted survey experiments tracking changes in voter trust.

Plans include hosting national meet-ups, producing accessible research briefs and videos and continuing post-election surveys of trust in 2026 and 2028. A research advisory board, composed of election officials, association leaders and scholars, will help guide the effort.

During the past two election cycles, Kousser and Prather have partnered with state and local officials in Texas, Georgia, Colorado, California, Arizona and Connecticut to study their trust-building efforts. They are working on new partnerships in Oregon and Idaho.