Electoral fraud and integrity challenges in transitional democracies have contributed to the institutionalization of election observation as a global norm. Election observation helps reduce the incidence of electoral fraud and manipulation and, by so doing, provides an independent third-party verdict of the level of freeness and fairness of elections in which they were involved. The continuous participation of election observers in the electoral processes of transitional democracies is supposed to increase the capacity of electoral management bodies (EMBs) and consequently increase trust in EMBs. Yet very little is known about the relationship between election observation and the perception of trust for EMBs. This paper examines this relationship using data from the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers in Ghana and the Afrobarometer Survey Round 7 of Ghana. We find that a higher share of observed polling stations in a district correlates negatively with the level of trust for EMBs. This means that an increase in the number of polling stations observed in a district leads to a decrease in the trust levels respondents have for EMBs. This result does not hold in all types of polling stations. For competitive polling stations, levels of trust for EMBs increase as the number of observed polling stations in a district increases.