Voter turnout reflects political participation in both democracies and autocracies, and corruption’s impact on turnout is a matter of long-term debate. Previous literature has addressed three major theories: the distrust theory, trade theory, and the removal theory. However, the empirical analysis of how corruption perceptions and activities affect voter turnout is limited, especially for authoritarian regimes. Based on village-level elections data in China, this paper finds: (1) citizen perceptions of corruption depress turnout by lowering interest in elections, which is inconsistent with the removal theory but shows that distrust in elections can be one of the mediators; (2) both corruption perceptions and experienced corruption can raise people’s concern about Chinese democracy and consequently depress turnout; this mediation analysis reveals that corruption influences turnout through dwindling trust in the regime; (3) electoral corruption increases turnout directly, which supports the trade theory. Overall, although corruption can directly “buy” votes, it may undermine voting by decreasing political trust in both elections and the regime.