About the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections

Co-Directors Thad Kousser and Lauren Prather

Launched in fall 2025 with support from the Election Trust Initiative, the UC San Diego Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections works to strengthen public confidence in U.S. elections by bringing together election officials, policymakers, and researchers. The Center builds on earlier research-practice partnerships carried out through the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research. Today, it works with civic organizations, election administrators, outside experts, university researchers, and partners such as Agora, the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, and the Yankelovich Center to design, test, and scale practices that enhance transparency and increase trust in the electoral process.

Our work is driven by the needs of election officials. Through surveys of election officials and policymakers, the Center identifies pressing research questions, guides innovative interventions, and evaluates trust-building initiatives.

The Center studies a range of promising trust-building practices, including:

• public communications and messaging campaigns,
• media initiatives by election officials,
• trusted community messengers,
• election audits and observation, and
• election facility tours for the public, candidates, and policymakers.

Across these projects, the Center focuses on strengthening the ability of election officials to communicate the integrity of elections to the public. The Center then evaluates these initiatives with observational and experimental research designs to provide evidence-based insights in accessible formats.

Putting findings into action is a core goal of the Center. The Center shares its work through practitioner-focused resources, digestible executive reports, national convenings, and programs that help trusted leaders disseminate findings within their professional networks and associations.