Elections officials, news outlets and major universities including UC San Diego have gone to great lengths to demonstrate voting systems are sound, results are accurate and election-changing fraud hasn’t occurred. A strong majority of Americans have confidence in U.S. elections, but there are way too many who don’t. About 3 in 10 Americans doubt their votes will be counted accurately, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Earlier this year, another poll showed more than a third of Americans — mostly Republicans — didn’t think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. That’s after myriad legal cases, reviews, recounts and investigative news stories that showed fraud did not deny a second term to Donald Trump, who nevertheless continues to make that claim. That raises the question of how much any well-meaning information campaign about the voting process can sway adamant election deniers. But they apparently can make inroads on less hard-core skeptics. The aforementioned organizations and others have stepped up efforts in recent years to allay concerns about the accuracy of vote counts. The methods have included videos, election facility tours, step-by-step articles about ballot safeguards and “prebunking” messages to counter often-evidence-free claims about faulty or rigged election results. But efforts by elections officials to ensure accuracy may have created a Catch 22 — by adding more layers of internal procedures and scrutiny. The aim is to reassure the public, but that can delay results, which can fuel distrust in the electoral system. The Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at UC San Diego has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University to produce regular studies aimed at building trust in elections. Their latest report examined how a simple informational video can affect voter perception of the integrity of voting systems when results are delayed. The conclusion is that such an effort can have at least some success in bolstering confidence in elections. Still, it’s a slow climb, particularly after years of Trump and his followers seeking to undermine the integrity of elections. Researchers and pro-democracy groups are hoping repetition of information about election security measures now and in the future will help shrink the number of doubters. “Election officials can reassure voters that delayed election results aren’t a sign of fraud, but they should proactively communicate this before the election,” said Mackenzie Lockhart, a lead author of the study. Lockhart is now a postdoctoral scholar at Yale University who worked on the research while a political science graduate student at UC San Diego. The survey, published by the journal PNAS Nexus of the Oxford University Press, involved nearly 10,000 people to gauge the effects of delays in reporting results. Some participants watched a 40-second video produced by the Arizona secretary of state that explained why counting ballots takes time, while others did not. They were informed about the results of a recent election but not all of the people in the study were told about the six-day delay in finalizing results. People who were told about the delay but did not see the video were 6.5 percentage points less trusting of the results than those who heard no information about a delay. Among people who watched the video, trust only decreased by 2.6 percentage points. “Providing voters with information about vote counting and the legitimate reasons for delays increases trust and mitigates the distrust induced by delays,” according to an abstract of the study. Leaning on information and transparency by local election officials potentially could enhance trust in voting. For one thing, voters apparently believe locals do a better job handling elections than officials at higher levels, according to the Pew Research Center. Going into the 2022 midterm elections, Pew found that 70 of registered voters believed that elections would be well run at the national level. That number increased to 90 percent when respondents were asked about their expectations of how elections in their community would be administered. In addition to trained public servants running local election offices, the elections themselves are “supported by volunteer poll workers who are neighbors of those voting,” Pew said. Last week, the San Diego County Registrar of Voters invited the public to observe how the office processes ballots. Officials performed what’s called a public logic and accuracy test, according to KPBS. The procedure involved having votes cast on ballots, tabulating them by hand, then scanning them in the electronic tabulation system and comparing the two. Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Center and professor of political science at UC San Diego, said the partnership of UCSD, MIT and Johns Hopkins is conducting “rigorous tests of what messages work, what don’t work, and what works best.” Troubling clouds loom over the November election. There are people who believe any election their side loses must be illegitimate. Threats to election workers have been on the rise. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection didn’t stop certification of Biden’s election, but it could have. Some analysts believe there’s potential for violence again. As if to underscore how toxic things have become, ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington state were torched a few days ago. Fighting the good fight with public service announcements is a worthy endeavor. But the country’s going to have to figure out a way to deal with nefarious political acts and a desire to overturn legitimate elections at seemingly any cost.