Event Summary
Countries around the world—even long-established democracies—grapple with the fundamental issue of guaranteeing that their elections are fair and competitive. Recent events ranging from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Indiana’s voter identification law to the turmoil that has resulted from Zimbabwe’s recent presidential contest only confirm that fact. Drawing on social science research from the U.S. and abroad,
Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation (Brookings, 2008), explores ways to define, measure and detect fraud, and makes recommendations for reform.
Event Information
When
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
2:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Where
Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map
On May 21, the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project hosted a discussion with the book’s editors, R. Michael Alvarez of Caltech, Thad Hall of the University of Utah and Susan Hyde of Yale University. Thomas Mann, co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and senior fellow at Brookings, moderated the panel.
After the program, panelists took audience questions.
Transcript
Thomas Mann: Election fraud is a dangerous word. It's a word with all kinds of political connotations. In fact, you could probably identify the partisanship of a person speaking in terms of their inclination toward talking about fraud or accessibility. This doesn't surprise you. This issue is very much caught up in some intensely partisan debates about election law and administration. We've had a major Supreme Court decision recently on the Indiana voter ID law. We're beginning to implement in the primaries and now in the general election laws in half the states regarding some forms of voter identification, all presumably built or in large part built upon the aspiration to prevent or deter various forms of election fraud.
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Participants
Panelists
R. Michael Alvarez
Professor of Political Science, California Institute of Technology
Thad E. Hall
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Utah
Susan D. Hyde
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University