International election monitoring has spread dramatically since the 1990s, spawning an industry and becoming a near right-of-passage for entry into the global community. It has also become the focus of scholarly debate that considers the impact of monitoring on political protest, incumbent-opposition relations, and democratization. Despite these studies, little is known about whether monitoring evaluations send signals at home. Do the conclusions of monitors affect the domestic legitimacy of elections? This paper uses a survey experiment conducted in Jordan and Tunisia to answer that question. Respondents are randomly placed into three conditions—one group given no international evaluation, another a positive evaluation, and the third a negative evaluation—and asked the extent to which the elections represented the will of the people. The results are intriguing. Statements from monitors are associated with lower evaluations of the elections, suggesting that the mere presence of evaluation makes citizens more critical of the electoral process. Moreover, evaluations have a greater influence on those with less political awareness than other citizens. Taken together, we find that election monitors matter, but in surprising ways.