Abstract
Does experience with voting by mail reduce mail-in voter fraud beliefs? Can personal experience counter partisan forces when the two conflict? I answer these questions by examining mail-in voter fraud beliefs in a single-state study following the 2020 presidential election, in which mail-in voter fraud became a more intense political and partisan issue. I focus on the ways in which partisan affiliation and personal experience may shape voters’ attitudes about mail-in voter fraud. Building on Zaller’s (1992) RAS model and Cramer and Toff’s (2017) framework of personal experience, I develop a theory to explain how firsthand experience can mitigate partisanship. Using OLS regression and instrumental variable analyses to test this theory, I find suggestive, causal evidence that voting by mail decreases beliefs about the prevalence of voter fraud. My results also confirm that affiliation with the Republican Party increases voter fraud beliefs. Including an interaction effect in the analysis provides no support for my hypothesis that the effect of voting by mail is conditioned on partisanship. I conclude from these findings that voting by mail can indeed mitigate the effect of partisanship on beliefs about fraud, despite the strength of partisan ties and polarization of the current political era. I consider the potential policy implications of these findings and argue that efforts to combat misinformation about mail-in voter fraud should consider interventions that increase voters’ experience with voting by mail.