Voter Misperceptions

Research articles can provide excellent information about what shapes voters opinions and how these influences can affect votes, and Ansolabeher et. al (2008) includes great insight into specific topics that influence perceptions of voter fraud. The authors asked participants how common they believed voter fraud, voter theft, and voter impersonation each were and collected categorical data about the participants in order to analyze the responses. The authors found that, although the overall beliefs in the 3 were very similar; there were noticeable differences in the voting patterns of people who believed in each one. For example, those who believe voter theft almost never happens are about 8% less likely to vote than someone who believes voter …show more content…
This information reveals that perceptions of voter fraud can be easily influenced by things as simple as how the vote is taken, which means that more research needs to be done on the trustworthiness of voting systems to citizens feel confident in the election process. Even research that does not focus specifically on voter fraud can help contribute to the realm of knowledge about the misperceptions of voter fraud. Fitzgerald (2013) examines what the term “political” means to different kinds of people, and this is an important article because “voting fraud” has so many different definitions, it simply depends on who you ask. Fitzgerald’s research found that subjects like tax cuts and nuclear weapons were strongly considered political, while diet pills and museum exhibits were almost never considered political. Because the author collected data on a very subjective study, the survey methodology could also be used to study voter