Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy Audiobook (Free)

As the 2020 presidential campaign begins to take form, there is widespread distrust of the fairness and accuracy of American elections. With this timely and accessible publication, Richard L. Hasen uses riveting stories illustrating four factors increasing the mistrust. Voter suppression offers escalated being a Republican tool aimed to depress turnout of likely Democratic voters, fueling suspicion. Wallets of incompetence in election administration, often in large cities controlled by Democrats, possess created an opening to statements of unfairness. Old-fashioned and new-fangled dirty tricks, including foreign and local misinformation campaigns via social media, threaten electoral integrity. Inflammatory rhetoric about ‘stolen’ elections supercharges distrust among hardcore partisans.

Considering how each one of these threats offers manifested in recent years-most notably in the 2016 and 2018 elections-Hasen offers concrete steps that need to be taken to restore rely upon American elections prior to the democratic course of action is totally undermined.