Putting people from opposite political parties on the same corporate audit committee actually makes the company's math more honest.
Using data from 20 years of corporate boards, this study found that political dispersion creates a 'monitoring-through-distrust' effect. Instead of causing gridlock, the ideological friction emboldens members to dissent and increases professional skepticism, leading to fewer accounting tricks.
Divided We Monitor: How Political Divisions Reshape Audit Committee Oversight 
SSRN · 6309381
I examine how political dispersion within audit committees affects financial reporting quality. Using a sample of 45,274 observations from 2003-2022, I document a steady increase in committee-level political dispersion, driven primarily by the influx of Democratic-leaning female directors into formerly Republican-dominated audit committees. I find that political dispersion is negatively associated with discretionary accruals, a result robust to controlling for demographic diversity and state-lev