Abstract

In recent years, there have been major concerns about the role of technology in US elections and, more in general, about the integrity and fairness of the whole electoral process. The question of whether or not the introduction of information and communication technologies (Icts) into critical aspects of election administration would improve electoral integrity and democratic quality has been widely debated, both inside and outside the US, especially after the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic at a global level. The article is divided into two parts. The first examines the diffusion of the Icts in the 2020 US presidential elections, with special attention to their impact on three stages of the electoral process: voter registration, voting process and election result processing. The second part of the article deals with the dilemma presented by the 2020 elections – that is, how the most secure and fair elections in the history of the United States, with a record-high level of turnout, turned out to be the most litigious since the end of WWII. To solve this dilemma, the role of (rising) polarization and (negative) partisanship is considered and empirically analyzed.