624102

research-article2016
SPAXXX10.1177/1532440015624102State Politics & Policy QuarterlyBowler and Donovan

Article
State Politics & Policy Quarterly
1 ­–22
A Partisan Model of © The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1532440015624102
Voter Identification sppq.sagepub.com

Laws and Confidence

in State Elections

Shaun Bowler1 and Todd Donovan2

Abstract
We propose a model of public response to politicized election reform. In this model,
rival partisan elites send signals on the need and consequences of a proposed reform,
with partisans in public adopting those positions. We apply this to test how state use
of voter identification laws corresponded with public evaluations of the conduct of a
state’s elections. We find that the relationship between photo identification laws and
confidence in state elections was polarized and conditioned by party identification in
2014. Democrats in states with strict photo identification laws were less confident in
their state’s elections. Republicans in states with strict identification laws were more
confident than others. Results suggest strict photo identification laws are failing to
instill broad-based confidence in elections, and that the reform could correspond
with diminished confidence among some.

Keywords
public opinion, public policy, electoral systems, election rules, political behavior,
parties and elections, electoral integrity

Introduction
Scholars of elections propose that the legitimacy of democratic regimes depends, in no
small part, on public confidence in the integrity of the election process (Alvarez, Hall, and

1University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

2Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Todd Donovan, Department of Political Science, Western Washington University, MS 9082, Bellingham,
WA 9825, USA.
Email: todd.donovan@wwu.edu

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2 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

Llewellyn 2008; Birch 2008; Elkit and Reynolds 2005; Norris 2004; 2014). Democracy
requires that both winners and losers view election outcomes as the result of a fair process
(Anderson et al. 2005). Myriad aspects of the electoral process can affect perceptions that
elections are fair; studies have found that electoral formula, bribery, vote buying, cam-
paign finance rules, and quality of administration may affect trust and confidence in elec-
tions and support for democratic institutions (Anderson and Tverdova 2003; Birch 2008;
Bowler, Brunell, Donovan, and Gronke 2015; McAllister and White 2011).
One paramount factor affecting perceptions of electoral integrity is confidence in
the process of balloting and vote counting (Elkit and Reynolds 2002; 2005; Hall and
Wang 2008). Indeed, the major motivation for electoral reform in the United States
after the 2000 presidential election crisis in Florida was to assure public confidence in
the process of casting and counting votes (e.g., Commission on Federal Election
Reform 2005; National Commission on Federal Election Reform 2001). The 2002
Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was the primary legislative manifestation of this at the
federal level. HAVA directed federal money to states to fund improvements in voter
registration and ballot counting (Alvarez and Grofman 2014), while also opening the
door for the dissemination of new voter identification laws (Stewart 2014).
Voter identification laws have proven to be the more controversial of these post-
2000 reforms of election administration. Their adoption has been supported by claims
that the laws are needed to improve public confidence in elections (e.g., Crawford v.
Marion County Election Board 2008), but the politics of state adoption has been highly
partisan. Most of the strict photo identification state laws were adopted by Republican-
controlled legislatures.1 Some scholars describe state adoption of voter ID laws as “Jim
Crow 2.0” (Bentele and O’Brien 2013) and see them as a vote suppression policy that
reflects a Republican strategy to curtail Democratic electoral gains (Hicks et al. 2014).
This article focuses on how these laws might affect confidence in the integrity of
elections; we set aside the better studied question about the effects of voter identifica-
tion laws on turnout. Although the Court acknowledged in Crawford that the record
contained no evidence of voter impersonation (see also Hasen 2012; Hood and
Gillespie 2012; Minnite 2007; 2010; Wang 2012),2 the majority ruled that independent
of any instances of fraud, photo identification laws were justifiable because of a state’s
significant interest in “protecting public confidence in elections.” One reason for this,
the Court opined, was that confidence in elections was a prerequisite for voter partici-
pation (for research on the relationship between identification laws and turnout, see
Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn 2008; Ansolabehere 2009; Barreto, Nuno, and Sanchez
2009; Hood and Bullock 2012; Vercellotti and Anderson 2009).
We propose theory and hypotheses about the relationships between partisanship,
election rules, and public attitudes relating to electoral integrity. We test our hypothe-
ses with a 50-state (and Washington, DC) sample of opinion data that measured public
confidence in how votes were cast and counted in a respondent’s state. Results confirm
expectations derived from our theory. Rather than building broad-based confidence in
how elections were conducted, voter identification laws corresponded with mass
polarization in confidence about electoral integrity. Higher levels of confidence about
the incidence of fraud that might be associated with strict identification laws were

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Bowler and Donovan 3

found among people who identified as Republican. We also find that Democrats living
in states with strict identification laws, and Democrats asked for identification, were
less confident in their state’s elections. Republicans in states with strict identification
laws were substantially more confident. This implies that these laws may not have
accomplished one of the key goals that was seen as essential in their justification.

A Partisan Model of Election Reform3

Many rules governing the conduct of elections are the product of strategic interests of
partisan incumbents who (largely) control the process of designing such rules. A wide
variety of election rules can be seen as having a zero sum nature (Tsebelis 1990), such
that change from a status quo arrangement may alter the balance of advantages and
disadvantages between rival parties. Changes in election rules are often viewed
through the lens of partisan self-interest; partisan incumbents often author the rules in
their own self-interest (Bowler, Donovan, and Karp 2006).
Electoral rules provide many examples of these kinds of processes at work.
Expansion of the franchise in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example,
can be seen as a rule change that offered minority parties opportunities to challenge or
surpass the dominance of a majority party of the day (Tsebelis 1990, 113). Elite support
for changing to proportional electoral systems can also be understood in terms of stra-
tegic calculations by rival partisans. Changes to the electoral system in Australia (Farrell
and McAllister 2005), British Columbia (Angus 1952), and New Zealand (Banducci
and Karp 1999) have been documented in terms of strategic elites seeking partisan
advantage (also see Bawn 1993 on Germany). Mass and elite support for election
reform proposals in the United States such as legislative term limits (Karp 1995),
changes in redistricting rules (Donovan 2011), primary election rules (Cain and Gerber
2001; Ware 2002), and direct election of the president (Karp and Tolbert 2010) can also
be understood through strategic calculations of partisans. In many of these cases, the
attitudes of partisans in the public can be seen as reflecting the positions of party elites.
A model of partisan self-interest applied to changes in electoral rules is not entirely
novel. But we add to this the idea that, in democratic systems, partisan elites often
need to generate popular support for proposals—or for challenges to proposals—that
change rules about how elections are conducted. Given concern for procedural fair-
ness as a widely held principle in mass attitudes (Tyler 1988), and given public con-
cern over fairness in the process of democratic politics (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse
2001), it is not sufficient for a majority or minority party to promote a rule change with
an argument along the lines of “this will advantage our party, we have the votes, so we
will do it.” Rather, mass expectations over the integrity of the electoral process require
that elites make normative arguments while advancing their partisan interests.
Furthermore, research documents that in addition to their partisan interests, legislators
evaluate rule changes in terms of their personal values about how democracy should
work (Bowler, Donovan, and Karp 2006).
This means that election rules, particularly those that are newly adopted, exist as the
result of an interaction between strategic calculations of rival partisan elites and political

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4 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

arguments those elites make to the public to promote or defeat a rule change (Bowler and
Donovan 2013). New election rules are not simply the product of one dominant party
being strong enough to push through any change it may see as an advantage. Legislators
face the threat of reelection, or, in many states, institutions of direct democracy that may
unravel rules baldy advanced by self-interested elites. As a result, when partisan elites
advance or critique proposals to change election rules, they have strong incentives to
make (biased) normative arguments that justify their position on a rule change in a man-
ner that appeals to procedural concerns over fairness and electoral integrity.
Regardless of the veracity of the normative aspects of these arguments, the public
is exposed to normative, partisan arguments about the pros and cons of a change to an
election rule prior to the change taking effect and opinion is likely to divide along
partisan lines, that is, people learn about political issues via cues and signals received
from elites. Given the public has a rather limited grasp of the factual nuances of mat-
ters of policy and political institutions (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, 70–71), mass
opinion on such topics can reflect positions taken by elites, or as Key (1966) put it,
“the voice of the people is but an echo” of elite signals about such matters. Popular
perceptions of a politicized election rule and its consequences, then, will reflect parti-
san polarization in mass opinion that mirrors signals from partisan elites (Lupia and
McCubbins 1998; Zaller 1992).
It follows, then, that when prominent Democratic and Republican elites take diver-
gent positions on arguments about an electoral reform, their partisan supporters in the
public follow suit. Competing rules for redistricting practices provide an example.
Democratic legislators who were in the minority in Florida and their allies, and
Republican legislators and their allies in the minority in California both used similar
arguments about the fairness and integrity of the electoral process while championing
an electoral reform that served their respective party’s interest.4 In this case, the minor-
ity parties advocated reforms that weakened a legislative majority’s control over dis-
tricting (Bowler and Donovan 2013). Minority party incumbents in each state
(Democrats in Florida, Republicans in California) promoted similar ballot measures
designed to weaken the majority party’s control over redistricting, and their partisan
supporters in the electorate responded in kind. These redistricting measures were more
popular among Democratic voters in Florida and Republican voters in California
(Donovan 2011). Term limits, likewise, were viewed more favorable by Republicans in
states where Democrats were in the majority and relatively less favorably by Republican
voters in states where Republicans held a majority in the legislature (Donovan and
Snipp 1994). Wilson and Brewer (2013) likewise identified partisan polarization in
opinion about voter identification laws in a national survey conducted in 2012.

Voter Identification Laws and Public Confidence in

Elections
We suggest this partisan theory of electoral reform can be applied widely to evaluate
public perceptions of many election reforms where parties are divided, and we apply
it in this case to generate hypotheses about the effects of voter identification laws on

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Bowler and Donovan 5

public confidence in elections. The primary causal mechanism here is that reforms
presented and promoted by rival partisan elites are likely to be seen as such by parti-
sans in the public. Partisans in the public think about electoral laws in very similar
ways to partisan elites, with voters often taking their cues about the reforms from elite
rhetoric (Bowler and Donovan 2013). When election law reforms are implemented,
then, we would expect voters’ responses to those laws to mirror themes from debates
among elite opinion leaders.
As for that debate, Stewart (2014, 97) noted that starting in 2002, HAVA fostered a
political process that “stoked paranoia about elections being stolen, either because of
hacked voting machines or fraudulent voting.” If there was initial bipartisan concern
over the need for strict voter ID laws (see Commission on Federal Election Reform
2005), it faded quickly. Partisan arguments over the adoption of photo identification
laws can be simplified as one where Republicans contended that voter impersonation
presented risks of elections being “stolen” (e.g., Fund 2004; von Spakovsky 2011),
whereas Democrats contended that requirements for photo identification were attempts
at voter suppression (e.g., Overton 2006). By 2003, six states had adopted “nonstrict,
nonphoto ID” rules, with five of these states having Republican legislatures (the sixth
being Alabama). The first strict photo identification laws were adopted by Republican
legislatures in Georgia and Indiana in 2005, and by Republicans in Missouri in 2006.5
As of 2014, 31 states had voter identification laws, with strict photo identification laws
in effect in Kansas, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Photo identification laws have often been adopted on near-pure party-line floor votes,
with nearly all Republicans in favor and nearly all Democrats in opposition (Bentele
and O’Brien 2013; Bowler and Donovan 2013, 30; Davidson 2009). Hicks et al.
(2015) found that adoption was most likely in electorally competitive states where
Republicans controlled government.
Mass opinion about the need for voter identification reflects these elite divisions.
Multiple opinion polls conducted since the adoption of HAVA have shown that while
voter identification requirements were popular, Republicans were much more con-
cerned about the threat of voter impersonation than Democrats. A 2007 Cooperative
Congressional Election Study (CCES) survey found Republican identifiers more than
twice as likely as Democrats to respond that voter fraud was “very common” (35% vs.
15%; Ansolabehere and Persily 2008). A 2008 YouGov/Polimetrix survey found 21%
of Republicans responding that voter fraud occurred “very often,” compared with just
7% of Democrats who had such perceptions (Ansolabehere and Persily 2008). Table 1
reports opinion data measured in a 2014 Survey on the Performance of American
Elections (SPAE) and illustrates that these partisan differences in perceptions of elec-
tions persisted into 2014.
Despite the importance that the Court assigned to the presumed effects of voter
identification laws on confidence in elections in Crawford, there is relatively little
research into how these laws are associated with perceptions of the conduct of
elections. Of the studies we have identified, there is little to suggest that voter
identification laws affect confidence in elections. Atkeson’s (2014, 117) study of
voter confidence in New Mexico concluded, “voter identification policies appear

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6 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

Table 1.  Percent Saying They Think Various Forms of Illegal Voting Are “Very Common”
and “Occasional” in Respondent’s City or County, and Percent Who Were “Very Confident”
in Their State’s Vote Count, 2014.

Democrat (%) Republican (%) Independent (%)

People voting more than 11 27 23
once in an election
People pretending to be 13 28 24
someone else when voting
People voting who are not 13 39 30
U.S. citizens
Very confident in state’s 45 50 39
vote count

Source. 2014 Survey of the Performance of American Elections.

to have little effect.” Ansolabehere (2009), likewise, concluded from surveys of

national opinion that those living in states with strict identification laws were no
more confident about elections than people in states with the weakest identifica-
tion rules, and that people asked to show identification at the polls were no more
confident about electoral integrity than those who were not asked (Ansolabehere
and Persily 2008).
But by neglecting to examine partisan differences in perceptions of elections, these
studies may be missing the potential polarizing effects that voter identification laws
have on perceptions of elections. Moreover, the laws were relatively new when those
studies were conducted. We expect that because partisan elites have provided clear,
divergent signals about their positions on the consequences of having or not having
voter identification rules that public perceptions of the application of voter identifica-
tion laws will reflect these partisan divisions. As Atkeson’s (2014, 118) study demon-
strates, most people do not experience election fraud personally; they live it vicariously
through media (see also Gronke and Hicks 2009).
For approximately a decade since the first states began adopting these laws, rival
partisan narratives about the laws’ effects on the conduct of elections have been dis-
seminated. News media have directed attention to state legislative battles over adopt-
ing voter identification laws, to several state and federal court challenges to the laws,
to Justice Department actions associated with the laws, to various conspiracy “theo-
ries,” to stories about the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now
(ACORN), and given coverage to the arguments of rival party elites. Partisan signals
about voter identification laws, then, have been available to the public. Selective expo-
sure to partisan-themed media outlets by partisans in the public (Stroud 2008; 2010)
could further increase the likelihood that partisans absorbed their respective party’s
narrative on the consequences of strict voter identification laws.6 There is some evi-
dence consistent with this. Wilson and Brewer (2013) found that other things held
constant, Fox News viewers were more supportive of voter identification laws.

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Bowler and Donovan 7

Hypotheses
How then, might we expect people to respond to these laws where they are in effect?
That is, what does our partisan model of election reform suggest we should expect
about how people evaluate the integrity of elections where these laws are in effect?
Given signals from Republican elites, we assume Republicans in the public were more
likely to absorb the narrative that strict voter identification laws are an improvement
to the conduct of elections because, without the laws, fraudulent voting will occur.
Republicans may thus see the laws as good, effective election practice. As such,
Republicans living in states that used strict ID laws should be more confident that
fraud was uncommon and that elections in their state were conducted properly.
One might expect that states with higher instances of fraud were more likely to
adopt strict identification laws. But, as noted above and as recognized by the Court in
Crawford, there is little or no evidence of voter impersonation occurring (see also
Minnite 2007; 2010). Strict identification laws thus seem to exist almost entirely inde-
pendent from actual levels of voter impersonation in a state. Nevertheless, if it were
true that stricter ID laws responded to actual problems of fraud then we would expect
all voters in strict ID states—including Republicans—to be more likely to think fraud
was common and be less confident in elections.
Democrats, however, are assumed to have absorbed the narrative of Democratic
elites that strict voter identification is an attempt at vote suppression aimed at diluting
the Democratic vote. Democrats living in states with strict ID laws, then, should be
less confident that elections in their state were conducted properly, and adoption of
strict ID laws should have had no effect on Democrats’ perceptions of the instances of
voter fraud. That is, while a partisan model would lead Republican voters to see ID
laws as effective, the laws should have no effect on Democrats.
We also expect that there should be partisan differences in how the application of
voter identification rules affects perceptions of electoral integrity. Studies have docu-
mented that the implementation of voter identification rules by poll workers was
uneven, and that voter identification laws were not applied in a race-neutral manner.
Cobb, Greiner, and Quinn (2010) demonstrated that black voters and Latino voters,
and Atkeson et al. (2010) demonstrated that Latino voters were more likely than white
voters to be asked for identification when voting. This suggests that the election day
experience for some voters involves witnessing people of color being asked for iden-
tification—an experience that is consistent with, and could reinforce, the Democratic
narrative that voter identification laws degrade the integrity of elections by dispropor-
tionately affecting groups of voters known to affiliate with the Democratic Party.7
Given this, and given the Democratic narrative about vote suppression, we expect that
partisans interpret the experience of being asked for identification differently.
Democrats who were asked for identification, then, should be more cynical about the
conduct of elections. Given the prevailing Republican narrative about voter fraud, a
Republican experiencing a request for identification while voting may view the request
as a process that increases electoral security. Republicans who were asked for identifi-
cation, then, should be less cynical about the conduct of elections.

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8 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

Previous research suggests a number of additional factors that should be included in

models estimating attitudes about the conduct of elections and confidence in elections.
Research has documented that Latinos in Colorado and New Mexico have been no less
confident in elections than others (Atkeson et al. 2011; Atkeson et al. 2010; Atkeson and
Saunders 2007). However, given the discussion above about the uneven application of
voter identification laws, and given the history of disenfranchisement motivated by race
and ethnicity (Grofman and Davidson 1992; Keyssar 2000), we expect that Latinos and
African Americans (e.g., Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn 2008; Bullock, Hood, and Clark
2005) could have less confidence in the conduct of elections.8 Education has also been
found to be associated with voter confidence (Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn 2008), as has
gender, with women found to be less confident than men (Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn
2008; although see Atkeson and Saunders 2007; Hall, Monson, and Patterson 2009).
We also include age as a control, and we account for whether or not a person voted,
and whether or not one voted in person or by mail. Voters can be expected to be more
confidence in elections than nonvoters, and previous research suggests that there are
more counting errors associated with voting by mail (Stewart 2010) and that people
are less confident in votes cast by mail (Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn 2008; Atkeson
and Saunders 2007). Partisanship is included in the models with terms for Republican
and Democratic identifiers, respectively, interacted with experiences with voter iden-
tification, to test our primary hypotheses.9

Estimating Perceptions of Elections

Our hypotheses are tested with data from a postelection survey of 10,200 American
adults conducted in Fall of 2014. The 2014 SPAE included samples of 200 registered
voters from all 50 states and the District of Columbia (Stewart 2015). The survey was
directed by Charles Stewart of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project and was
conducted online by Polimetrix during the 2014 midterm election. Data and documen-
tation are publicly available via the Harvard Dataverse.10 Of respondents who reported
voting (more than 80% of the sample), 64% voted in person on election day, 16%
voted in person before election day, and 20% voted by mail. The sample was 54%
female, 81% white, with a partisan distribution of 34% Democrat, 27% Republican,
30% independent, and 9% “other” and “not sure.”11 The data are weighted in the anal-
ysis to be representative of respondents nationwide.
The first dependent variable for this study is constructed from three SPAE ques-
tions that asked about perceptions of illegal voting that voter identification laws might
be expected to police: “people voting more than once,” “people pretending to be some-
one else when going to vote,” and “people voting who are not U.S. citizens.” Response
options for these items were “very common,” “occurs occasionally,” “occurs infre-
quently, “it almost never occurs,” and “I’m not sure.” In the analysis reported here,
responses are rescaled, so high scores reflect perceptions that the illegal act was very
common, with “I’m not sure” responses at the center of a five-point scale. These three
items are combined into an index that reflects perceptions of fraud. A factor analysis
found that each of the three items load on a single tab at .79 or higher.12

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Bowler and Donovan 9

Our second dependent variable is an item asking respondents to “think about vote
counting throughout [respondent’s state]. How confident are you that votes in [respon-
dent’s state] were counted as voters intended?” Response options were rescaled to
range from “not at all confident,” “not too confident,” “I don’t know,” “somewhat
confident,” to “very confident.” With all analysis reported here, results are largely
unaffected by whether or not the “I don’t know” and “I’m not sure” responses are
omitted or included as a midpoint on a scale (see Table A1 of the appendix). This voter
confidence item is similar to measures that were included on the 2006 CCES and 2008
SPAE asking voters about their own vote being counted. Atkeson and Saunders (2007)
and Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn (2008) suggested a link between the individualistic
version of this confidence item and attitudes about democracy generally (where the
former causes the latter). Given that the state-centric version of the voter confidence
question asked people to think about counting generically in their state, we expect the
item reflects attitudes not just about the personal experience of voting but a broad view
of a person’s confidence in the conduct of elections in their own state.13
Our main independent variable is a measure of each state’s voter identification law
that was in effect as of October 31, 2014. We use the National Conference of State
Legislatures’ (NCSL) five-point scale for this, with states coded 1 if they had no docu-
mentation required for voting, 2 if they had nonstrict, nonphoto identification rules, 3
if they had nonstrict photo identification rules, 4 if the state had strict nonphoto iden-
tification requirements, and 5 if a state had strict photo identification requirements.14
Our main hypotheses are tested by interacting a respondent’s partisanship with the
status of her state’s voter identification rule, and by interacting partisanship with
whether or not the respondent was asked for identification when voting. Standard esti-
mates of individual opinions conducted with large sample surveys collected across a
relatively small cluster of higher level (state) cases could bias estimates of standard
errors such that the likelihood of Type I errors would increase (Steenbergen and Jones
2002). Given the multilevel nature of our data, our hypotheses were tested with multi-
level mixed models with fixed effects, and for comparison, with single-level models
specified with robust standard errors clustered by state. Multilevel linear regression
(column 1, Table 2) and ordinary least squares (OLS) with robust standard errors clus-
tered by state (column 2, Table 2) are used to model the three-item index of percep-
tions of voter fraud. Mixed effects ordered logit (column 1, Table 3) and ordered logit
with robust standard errors clustered by state (column 2, Table 3) are used to estimate
confidence in a state’s vote counting.

Results
Table 2 displays results of estimates of our voter fraud perception index—note that the
higher a score on the dependent variables in Table 2, the more a person perceived fraud
as common. The partisan differences in perceptions of voter fraud illustrated in Table
1 persist here when demographic traits, mode of voting, and other factors are accounted
for. Given the partisan battles over the need for voter identification laws, it may come
as no surprise that Republicans were significantly more likely to perceive that fraud

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10 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

Table 2.  Partisan Models of Perceptions of Voter Fraud: Three-Item Index, Higher
Values = More Fraud.

Variables Mixed effects linear regressions Ordinary least squares

Democrat −1.86** −1.84**

  (.19) (.18)
Republican 0.90** 0.86**
  (.19) (.20)
Black 0.97** 1.19**
  (.16) (.15)
Latino 0.40 0.80*
  (.24) (.27)
Female −0.08 −0.09
  (.07) (.06)
Age −0.012** −0.011**
  (.002) (.002)
Education −0.23** −0.23**
  (.03) (.03)
Asked ID 0.09 0.02
  (.16) (.18)
Voted −1.04** −1.05**
  (.12) (.12)
Vote by mail 0.47** 0.54**
  (.10) (.15)
State photo ID score 0.02 0.03
  (.06) (.06)
Republican × State ID Score −0.07 −0.06
  (.07) (.07)
Democrat × State ID Score 0.05 0.04
  (.06) (.07)
Republican × Asked ID −0.38 −0.42
  (.21) (.23)
Democrat × Asked ID 0.23 0.27
  (.25) (.25)
Constant 9.6** 9.57**
  (.25) (.25)
Variance (individual-level) 11.60  
Variance (state-level) .30  
Wald χ2/R2 1,308** .10
Level 1 N 10,146 10,146
Level 2 N 51  

Source. 2014 Survey on the Performance of American Elections.

Note. Robust standard errors clustered by state are in parentheses.
*p < .05. **p < .01 (two-tailed).

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Bowler and Donovan 11

Table 3.  Partisan Models of Confidence in State’s Elections (Confident that Votes in State
Counted as Intended, Higher Scores = More Confident).

Mixed effects ordered

Variables logit estimates ordered logit estimates

Democrat 0.74** 0.74**

  (.16) (.15)
Republican 0.16 0.17
  (.10) (.13)
Black −0.29** −0.40**
  (.10) (.11)
Latino 0.04 −0.16
  (.08) (.09)
Female −0.08* −0.07
  (.04) (.04)
Age 0.0003 −0.0004
  (.0014) (.0013)
Education 0.06** 0.06**
  (.02) (.02)
Asked ID 0.17 0.19
  (.10) (.11)
Voted 0.83** 0.80**
  (.07) (.07)
Vote by mail −0.07 −0.09
  (.06) (.08)
State photo ID score −0.04 −0.03
  (.04) (.04)
Republican × State ID Score 0.14** 0.13**
  (.03) (.04)
Democrat × State ID Score −0.16** −0.16**
  (.06) (.06)
Democrat × Asked ID −0.27 −0.26
  (.15) (.15)
Republican × Asked ID 0.01 0.02
  (.11) (.11)
Constant 1 −2.47** −2.45**
Constant 2 −1.09** −1.09**
Constant 3 −0.68** −0.68**
Constant 4 1.25** 1.20**
Variance (cons) .144  
Wald χ2 608.9* 692.3**
Level 1 N 10,196 10,196
Level 2 N 51  

Source. 2014 Survey on the Performance of American Elections.

Note. Robust standard errors clustered by state are in parentheses.
*p < .05. **p < .01 (two-tailed).

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12 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

was common. Democrats, in contrast, were significantly less likely to see fraud as
common. We also find people of color and people who voted by mail were more likely
to have perceived that fraud was common. As expected, voters were less skeptical
about fraud than nonvoters, and age and education correspond with being less likely to
perceive voter fraud.
As for the potential effects of strict voter identification laws on confidence in state
elections, we find evidence that the relationship between the laws and public perceptions
of elections was polarized on party lines. None of our model specifications yielded evi-
dence that strict photo identification laws had any broad, unconditioned effects on voter
confidence. The likelihood that a person perceived voter fraud as common was unrelated
to how strict her state’s voter identification laws were. However, there was a conditional
relationship associated with partisanship. Although Republicans were significantly more
suspicious of voter fraud, Republicans who were asked for ID were less so (Table 2), this
relationship is only marginally significant (p < .05, one-tailed).
As for public confidence in a state’s election process (Table 3), we find that parti-
sans generally, those with more education, and (not surprisingly) those who voted,
were more confident that votes were counted in their state as they were supposed to be.
African Americans and women, in contrast, had less confidence in their state’s elec-
tions. Again, we find no unconditional relationship between the strictness of a state’s
voter identification law and public confidence in elections. However, the polarized,
conditional relationship between voter identification laws and attitudes about the con-
duct of elections is quite evident when we examine a person’s confidence in their
state’s elections. Republicans living in states with stricter identification laws were
significantly and substantially more confident in their state’s elections, whereas
Democrats were significantly and substantially less confident.15 Democrats were
slightly less confident their state’s elections if they were asked for identification (p <
.05, one-tailed) when they voted. This study is not equipped to assess causality or
change in perceptions across time, but these results do suggest that if voter identifica-
tion laws had any positive effects on voter confidence, they were limited to Republicans,
and any potential positive effects among Republicans may have been offset by
depressed confidence among Democrats.
The magnitude of partisan differences in voter confidence associated with voter
identification laws is substantial—larger than the presumed effects of race and ethnic-
ity. Table 4 displays Clarify simulations (Tomz, Wittenberg, and King 2003) generated
from ordered logit estimates of confidence in state elections (from column 2, Table 3),
where we display the predicted probability that a respondent reported being “very
confident” in her state’s vote count. Our baseline respondent, a white, political inde-
pendent, female voter of median age and education, who resided in a state with the
mean level of voter identification strictness, is estimated to have a .42 probability (SE
= .02) of being very confident in her state’s elections. As shown in Table 3, Democratic
partisans were generally more confident in elections, all else equal. But the predicted
probabilities in Table 4 demonstrate how much this confidence was conditional on
whether a state was using strict voter identification procedures, and, to a lesser extent,
on whether or not someone was asked for identification at the polls.

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Bowler and Donovan 13

Table 4.  Predicted Probability of Being Very Confident in State’s Vote Count.

Baseline 0.42 (.02) Δ, from no ID state

to strict photo ID
Democrat in non-ID state 0.57 (.03)  
Democrat in strict photo ID state 0.39 (.03) −.18
Democrat, asked for ID in strict ID state 0.37 (.03) −.20
Black Democrat, non-ID state 0.50 (.05)  
Black Democrat, strict photo ID state 0.30 (.03) −.21
Black Democrat, asked for ID, strict ID state 0.28 (.03) −.23
Republican in non-ID state 0.47 (.04)  
Republican in strict photo ID state 0.60 (.03) +.13
Republican asked for ID, strict ID state 0.65 (.03) +.18

Note. Estimated from ordered logistic regression with robust standard errors clustered by state. Baseline
respondent is a white, female, independent who voted at the polls. Standard errors in parentheses.

A Democrat had a rather high probability of being very confident in her state’s elec-
tions (.57, SE = .03) if her state had no voter identification requirements. A Republican,
in contrast, had nearly the same probability (.60, SE = .03) of being very confident if
her state had the strictest photo identification rules. This probability of being very
confident melts away for Democrats in states with the strictest photo identification ( p
= .39), and it drops a bit further for Democrats who were asked for identification in the
strictest identification states ( p = .37). The relationship is reversed for Republicans. A
Republican in a state without voter identification had an almost even probability (.47)
of being very confident in her state’s vote counts. This increased (p = .65) for
Republicans in strict identification states who were asked for identification.
We should note that these results are quite robust; they are largely insensitive to
how the models are estimated. Hypothesis tests conducted with estimates of our
five-point opinion measure produce the same substantive results when modeled as
regular ordered logit with standard errors clustered by state, and when modeled
with multilevel mixed effects linear regression. Likewise, our hypothesis tests are
consistent regardless of whether or not “don’t knows” are omitted or included in the
analyses, and when state-level controls for income and a Pew Center measure of the
quality of the states election performance (circa 2012) are included (not reported).
Finally, when these models are estimated with voters only, and with three additional
controls that account for a respondent’s election day experiences, we find results
identical to those reported here. Table A1 of the appendix reports some of these
models, estimated to include controls for time spent in line, experience with prob-
lem associated with voting equipment, and experience with registration problems—
each of which have significant relationship confidence in a state’s election count.
Again, there was no generalized effect of voter identification laws on voter confi-
dence, but we do find voter identification laws had a significant relationship with
confidence that was conditioned by partisanship. Republican voters in states with
strict identification laws were more confident in their state’s elections, whereas

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14 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

Democratic voters in strict identification states, and Democrats asked for identifi-
cation, were less confident. In short, we consistently find that the relationship
between photo identification laws and confidence in state elections was polarized
and heavily conditioned by party identification.

Discussion
Results from our study reinforce something well established—that the manner in
which the process of voting is conducted has major effects on how people perceive the
integrity of elections (Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn 2008; Atkeson 2014; Atkeson and
Saunders 2007; Hall, Monson, and Patterson 2007). Our major contribution is to high-
light the consequences of politicized reforms on public confidence in elections. We
demonstrate that when a feature of election administration is highly partisan, there are
reasons to expect that the potential effect of that reform on public confidence in elec-
tions will be conditioned by partisanship.
We offer a model of election reform where public response to a reform reflects the
partisan environment from which the rule change emerged. In this model, rival parti-
san elites send signals on the need for and consequences of a proposed reform, with
partisans in public adopting those positions. After the law is passed and implemented,
we anticipate partisan reactions among voters to mirror those of the party debate that
around the change itself. We applied this model to examine how state use of voter
identification laws might have affected voter confidence in elections, and found polar-
ization in partisans’ confidence that corresponded with use of the laws. These results
are consistent with a process where (1) polarized elites send divergent narratives to the
public about the needs for and consequences of an election reform, (2) partisans in the
electorate adopt their party’s narrative about the benefit (or harm) of the reform, and
(3) this conditions how partisans in the public subsequently evaluate and experience
the reform when it is applied. Republicans were told by Republican elites that voter
identification would improve the integrity of elections, whereas Democrats were told
by Democratic elites that the reform would erode the legitimacy of elections. It fol-
lows, then, that when the laws were implemented, Democrats and Republicans would
experience them differently. We find evidence that was the case. Republicans living in
strict photo identification states were more confident in their elections, where
Democrats were less confident.
The results raise broader questions about the conditions necessary and sufficient for
an election reform to improve voter confidence in elections. With reforms that are the
product of a relatively consensual adoption process, or the product of a process where
party divisions are less overt, we might expect some broad, generalized effect of the
reform on voter confidence—particularly where there is high public support for a new
election rule and support is not divided along party lines. But this raises questions of
how often such conditions can be met. Given the partisan stakes of so many election
rules, there is a possibility that many rule changes that do result from elite consensus
may only be those so banal that the public may be unaware of them and so have little
effect on citizen attitudes toward electoral practices.

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Bowler and Donovan 15

It is the case that at least some aspects of the conduct of elections are not highly
politicized. Apart from matters of fiscal implementation costs, for the most part rival
partisan elites do not launch highly divisive contests over reforms such as those
designed to improve the training of polling place workers—at least not as loudly as
they contested voter identification laws. Similarly, rival elites do not (overtly) contest
policies aimed at improving the effectiveness of statewide registration databases. And,
for the most part, they do not construct rival narratives about the pros and cons of hav-
ing effective technology for counting ballots. As with nearly all election laws, there are
potentially partisan stakes even with these matters (e.g., discussions of registration
databases beget discussions of purging voter rolls, and discussions of electronic voting
systems beget discussions of vote theft). But these may be areas of reform where there
is some partisan consensus (or much less division), where the interests of rival party
elites do not reach a level of such salience that public attitudes about the consequences
of the reform polarize along party lines. Elites from different parts of the political
spectrum could communicate a uniform message about the positive consequences of a
reform.16 In such cases, we might expect reform to generally have positive effects on
confidence in elections, provided the reform is something the public can actually
notice.
But again, how often do such conditions apply? In many cases, a proposal for a
change in status quo election rules—particularly those that are highly visible—is
viewed differently by different partisans. One party may see a gain where the other
sees a loss. Examples of such cases include proposals for changes in redistricting prac-
tices, changes in electoral formula, various campaign finance reforms, changing local
elections from at-large to district, adopting term limits, voting by mail, election day
registration, lowering the voting age, and allowing noncitizens the vote in nonfederal
elections. In these cases, partisan elites tend to see what is at stake in a reform, and if
change is imminent they provide their supporters with rival narratives about how the
change might harm or help the democratic process. When this is the case, we suggest
the reform will be perceived in partisan terms, and its effects on how people view the
integrity of elections and representation may be polarized.
The application of this partisan model of election reform to voter identification
laws illustrates some manner of irony. To a degree, the Democrats’ narrative about
photo identification laws matched the Court’s Crawford decision: both recognized that
fraud was largely undocumented and rare. The Court, however, took the potential for
even rare, undocumented instances of voter fraud as justifying the need for strict voter
identification laws. This justification rested, in part, on the idea that voter identifica-
tion laws could “protect” public confidence in elections. Or, as federal reform com-
missions have put it, election reforms generally are said to be needed to “build
confidence” and to “assure pride and confidence” in elections.
Yet the highly politicized, acrimonious nature of legislative adoption, litigation,
and implementation of strict voter identification laws, and the partisan stakes, we con-
tend, likely determined that public evaluation of and public response to these laws
would be defined on party lines. Republicans argued that there would be fraud without
photo identification laws. Democrats argued (and some empirical studies report) that

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16 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

voter identification laws would be applied in ways that disadvantage groups of voters
who tend to vote for Democrats. It makes some sense, then, that despite their propo-
nent’s stated goal of building confidence in elections, and despite the Court’s rational-
ization of the laws as needed for building voter confidence, state identification laws
were associated with Republicans being more confident and Democrats being less
confident in their states’ elections. We suggest that the prospects for such polarized
effects of reform on public confidence in elections are not limited to voter identifica-
tion laws.

Appendix

Table A1.  Partisan Models of Confidence in State’s Elections; Voters Only with Additional
Controls for Election Day Experience.

“Don’t knows” excluded “Don’t knows” included

Democrat 0.85** 0.81**
  (.18) (.17)
Republican 0.04 0.06
  (.14) (.13)
Black −0.26 −0.35*
  (.15) (.14)
Latino −0.12 −0.17
  (.10) (.09)
Female 0.01 −0.03
  (.05) (.05)
Age −0.0019 −0.001
  (.0016) (.001)
Education 0.04* 0.05**
  (.02) (.02)
Showed ID 0.09 0.13
  (.13) (.12)
Vote by mail −0.13 −0.13
  (.11) (.11)
Wait in line −0.09* −0.06
  (.04) (.04)
Equipment problem −1.43** −1.38**
  (.20) (.19)
Registration problem −0.42* −0.40*
  (.17) (.18)
State photo ID score −0.01 −0.03
  (.05) (.05)
Republican × State ID Score 0.10** 0.12**
  (.04) (.04)
(continued)

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Bowler and Donovan 17

Table A. (continued)

“Don’t knows” excluded “Don’t knows” included

Democrat × State ID Score −0.20** −0.17*
  (.07) (.07)
Democrat × Asked ID −0.23 −0.25
  (.17) (.16)
Republican × Asked ID 0.20† 0.17
  (.10) (.11)
1 −3.36** −3.33**
2 −1.97** −1.94**
3 0.14 −1.68**
4 — 0.26
Wald χ2 269.0** 294.18**
Level 1 N 8,296 8,544
Level 2 N 51 51

Source. 2014 Survey on the Performance of American Elections.

Note. Mixed effects ordered logit estimates. Standard errors are in parentheses.
*p < .05. **p < .01. † p<.05 (two tail).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
  1. Twelve states had adopted strict photo identification laws as of 2014. These laws were
adopted by Republican-controlled legislatures in Indiana, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee,
Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and by divided legis-
latures in Arkansas and Virginia. Mississippi’s law was the product of an initiative. The
Arkansas, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Missouri, and Pennsylvania laws were not in effect
in 2014.
  2. Minnite (2007, 3), for example, noted that “only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded
guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year.”
  3. Our use of the word “reform” here is intended to be neutral, and to only reflect changes in
electoral arrangements that depart from a status quo.
 4. Although some Florida Democratic elites opposed to Amendments 5 and 6, and some
Republicans were in favor (including the Governor Christ, who had just left the Republican
Party), Republicans in the state legislature were strongly opposed, and the Republican
Party of Florida, the Florida Association of Realtors, the Florida Chamber of Commerce,
and U.S. Sugar spent $3 million against Florida’s Amendments 5 and 6. The National
Education Association, other unions, and a major Democratic donor spent $2.6 million in

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18 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 

favor of the amendments (Institute for Money and State Politics). California’s Proposition
11 in 2008 put redistricting into the hands of a citizen commission. Proposition 11 was
strongly supported by Governor Schwarzenegger, leading Republicans including Meg
Whitman and Charles Munger, and the California Republican Assembly. The California
Democratic Party opposed it.
 5. Adoption dates and party composition of legislatures are drawn from the National
Conference of State Legislatures.
  6. As an example of the potential for this, top returns on a simple Google News search of
“voter fraud” at the time of this writing included an MSNBC/Rachel Madow story claim-
ing that allegations of vote fraud by Kansas’ Republican Secretary of State were “exposed
as fraudulent,” and a National Review/John Fund story about how common it was for
felons to vote illegally.
  7. The Survey on the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) data indicate that 59.3% of
blacks reported saying they showed ID because they were asked. This compares with 50.6%
of Hispanics and 55.3% of whites. People were significantly more likely to report being
asked for ID in states ranked highest on the state photo ID score (chi-square p < .000).
  8. Race and ethnicity are represented with dichotomous measures where, respectively, 1 =
black, 0 = all others; 1 = Hispanic, 0 = all others.
  9. Independents and “other” party identifiers are the reference category.
10. See https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/28979.
11. Party identification is represented in the models with dichotomous measure where, respec-
tively, 1 = Democrat, 0 = all others; 1 = Republican, 0 = all others. The reference category
is thus independents and people who responded “other” or “not sure” to the three-point
party-ID question.
12. The single factor has an eigenvalue of 2.1, with the factor loadings being .79 for nonciti-
zens voting, .85 for people pretending to be others, and .85 for people voting more than
once. The bivariate correlations among the three items range from .70 to .77.
13. A principal components analysis demonstrates that this confidence item does not load on
the dimension represented by the three voter fraud perception items.
14. Strict rules mean that without acceptable identification, voters can only vote a provisional
ballot and must also take additional steps after the election for it to be counted.
15. If we account for states that had adopted strict laws that were not in place in 2014 due to
court actions, our conditional effect remains. Specifically, Missouri adopted strict photo
ID in 2006, but a state court struck the law. Wisconsin adopted in 2011, but courts did
not allow the law to be in effect in 2014. Pennsylvania adopted in 2012, but it was struck
down in 2014. Arkansas moved to strict photo ID in 2013, but that state’s court struck
the law in 2014. We recoded our photo ID variable setting Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and
Wisconsin at 5 (strict), and found that Democrats in strict ID states were less confident in
elections when Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were also coded as strict photo ID,
and Republicans were more so. In mixed effects ordered logit estimates, the main effect
for photo ID law strictness is not significant, but it is with standard ordered logit estimates.
We find the same patterns when Missouri is also recoded to a strict photo ID state. This
suggests it is the partisan debate over these laws, more than the application of the laws that
affects how people perceive electoral integrity. We also created a separate category for
these states that adopted strict photo ID laws that were not in effect. When that variable is
included in our models, conditional partisan effects for state ID are not changed from what
is reported in the tables.

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Bowler and Donovan 19

16. There are also times when election reform may breed elite consensus that is not well
embraced by partisans in the public—particularly when the reform is imposed on elites
externally. Democratic and Republican elites opposed reforms that introduced “blanket”
(Cain and Gerber 2001) and “top two” primaries in California and Washington, but voters
approved the measures by initiative. Rival partisan elites, likewise, united against term
limits measures in some states that were popular with voters.

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Author Biographies
Shaun Bowler is professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside. He is
co-author, with Todd Donovan, of The Limits of Electoral Reform (Oxford).
Todd Donovan is professor of political science at Western Washington University. He is coau-
thor, with Shaun Bowler, of articles on public perceptions of electoral integrity.

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