The media, voter fraud, and the U.S. 2012 elections

Over the past decade, voter fraud has emerged as a salient issue in American politics and elections. Despite minimal evidence of fraud cases and non-existent effects on election outcomes, Americans continue to believe in the existence and impact of voter fraud on elections. In this paper, we examine a potentially key source of this disconnect – the U.S. news media. How the media cover voter fraud likely affects citizens’ beliefs and opinions on the subject. However, little research exists exploring voter fraud coverage. In this paper, we examine the patterns and themes of voter fraud coverage in local newspapers for each of the 50 states during the 2012 elections. Amongst the results, we show that voter identification and registration were dominant topics in coverage. Further, battleground states and states that recently passed restrictive voting laws affected which topics related to voter fraud received the most attention. Finally, we find that the number of fraud cases in each state was unrelated to voter fraud news coverage. From an agenda setting and framing standpoint, our results suggest Republicans may have been successful in making voter identification and fraud a salient issue in the news during the 2012 elections.