Healthy democracies design and maintain electoral institutions where elections are free and fair, and voter participation is not thwarted for political gains. If these conditions exist, then election outcomes are legitimate, and voter trust in democratic institutions is high. Similarities exist across democratic nations in how electoral institutions are designed and how elections are run, yet the legitimacy of election outcomes and voter trust varies dramatically. What explains this variation across healthy democracies, and how does the United States fare in ensuring that elections are free and fair? What are the challenges to U.S. democracy that threaten to erode its institutional legitimacy, voter trust, and the integrity of the electoral process? And what are the strongest and weakest stages during the U.S. election cycle insofar as safeguarding electoral integrity is concerned?

These are the key questions addressed by Pippa Norris, Sarah Cameron, and Thomas Wynter in Electoral Integrity in America. In this edited volume, the authors argue that all “free” democracies show persistent institutional weaknesses throughout an election cycle. The United States, however, shows considerably more weaknesses, and it therefore performs much lower on many measures of democratic health and electoral integrity.

The editors begin by raising important points concerning particular challenges that may have long-term impacts on electoral integrity in the United States. The American federal structure of government and election administration allows for diverse institutional and administrative practices. It is no surprise, therefore, that election integrity varies across the states. Using a methodologically diverse approach, this volume breaks down the key components of electoral integrity, demonstrates the ongoing battles with regulating access to the voting process in the name of security, and proposes reforms in order to raise perceptions of electoral integrity to international standards. Norris, Cameron, and Wynter make an important contribution to the study of elections and election administration with this volume, in that they situate the concept of electoral integrity in a comparative perspective, suggesting that the United States is not exempt from universal norms and expectations about conducting free and fair elections.

The first part of this volume (Chapters 1–4) begins by discussing how the 2016 presidential election shook voters’ confidence due to rampant allegations of voter fraud and the proliferation of fake news. Drawing from various indicators of democratic health, such as the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, the Election Performance Index (EPI) and the Perceptions of Election Integrity Index (PEI), the authors in this part present the systematic electoral weaknesses across nations (Table 1.1). Because of the multidimensionality of the term “integrity,” they are very careful not to construct a blanket definition, which is why they evaluate different measures of integrity and compare them to the PEI indicators. The latter, the various authors argue, offer a more comprehensive measure of electoral integrity, one that can be used to systematically assess not only the American states but also the United States and other democracies. These measures, however, should be used with caution, as Michael Latner explains (p. 65). This is an important disclaimer, because it reminds researchers and policymakers that there are many contextual factors attached to holding elections that we might ignore if we rely exclusively on aggregate indicators. That said, the consistency in how the United States performs across such measures strongly suggests that there are merits in utilizing such criteria to evaluate electoral integrity.

The second part of the volume departs from direct analyses of electoral integrity and identifies five challenges to electoral integrity in the context of the United States. According to the authors in this section, these are the weakest areas in U.S. elections because they all have a negative impact on voter participation and also raise questions of perception about the openness of the electoral process itself. The analysis clearly shows that gerrymandering and voter identification laws have a tangible impact on election outcomes—not so much on voter turnout—but rather on the specific success of the Republican Party. These findings have implications about a fundamental principle in American democracy: majority rule. If state-led interventions result in vote dilution and partisan gains, then the standard of “free and fair” elections is not met.

Transparency in elections and the structure of election administration are central to the discussion of integrity. Though perhaps not surprising, it is interesting to note that states vary dramatically in how open their elections are to outside observers, especially nonpartisan and international observers. The contributors to this volume argue that the absence of such observers indicates disregard for international norms of transparency and election conduct, which is a very compelling argument. However, given that elections are run locally in the United States, it is possible that the absence of observers may simply indicate lack of knowledge concerning these international norms, lack of administrative capacity to enforce them, or both. It might be premature to infer intentional disregard for norms of election conduct without understanding why states and localities are not seemingly open to outside observation.

Craig Arceneaux (Chapter 8) suggests that decentralized election administration structures are highly problematic, because they allow for local administrative discretion. Comparing the United States to Canada, and Mexico to Brazil, Acreneaux argues that federal democracies with a centralized election administration minimize discretion, and actively create more incentives for voters to voice their electoral preferences by turning out to vote. This argument depicts a simplified picture of how elections are run in the United States, starting with the assumption that decentralized election administration has a uniform impact on turnout across the states. If election administration is decentralized across the states, then why do some enjoy significantly higher turnout than others, even when their election laws are similar?

The volume concludes with an overview of the PEI measure to showcase differences in the ways that U.S. experts evaluate electoral integrity in America compared to international experts. The authors show notable differences in how these experts view institutions, especially those that are criticized as being inherently undemocratic, such as the Electoral College. The authors claim that institutional structures, such as partisan gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and single member districts, create obstacles for reform. If that is the case, then centralizing electoral management and institutionalizing election openness is expected to increase electoral integrity by decreasing partisan competition. The role of political parties, however, appears to be assumed, and not explicitly accounted for. If political parties design electoral institutions and administer elections, and if electoral integrity varies across the states, then a discussion about how political parties design and administer elections is central for evaluating electoral integrity in the United States.

Electoral Integrity in America offers a useful overview of the key debates surrounding electoral integrity in the United States. Researchers should include this volume in their libraries, along with other texts that focus on U.S. election laws and measuring and administering elections in the United States, in order to draw from this volume’s comparative frame and apply it across the American states. For example, how can scholars explain that perceptions about electoral integrity are found to have only very marginal impacts on individual attitudes about democratic satisfaction and voting participation (Table 11.2)? Can this be explained due to limitations in the use of the World Values Survey as a source to measure public opinion in the United States, or does it indicate further challenges in measuring “electoral integrity”? Such are the many interesting questions raised by this volume.