Author: TheConversation

By Alexander Cohen, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Clarkson University During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump refused to promise to accept the results of the election. Likewise, in 2020, his continued assault on the reliability and legitimacy of mail-in voting has laid the groundwork for challenging a loss on the basis of voter fraud. He has also refused to promise to observe the 2020 results. This has led some to worry that a contested election would severely undermine faith in American democracy. Yet the United States has a long history of such contested elections. With one exception,...

By Luke Perry, Professor of Government, Utica College More than 8 in 10 Americans – all voters in 43 states – will be able to vote by mail in the 2020 presidential election, the most ever. And more than 1 in 3 voters plan to actually do so. Voting by mail can help citizens limit their exposure to the coronavirus pandemic, while still exercising their key right to vote in a democracy. Mail-in voting requires more steps than voting in person, and it happens in people’s homes, rather than at a polling place with trained help nearby. So it...

By Charlotte Hill, Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley; and Jake Grumbach, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Washington Voter fraud is very rare, whether people vote in-person or by mail. That much is clear from a large body of research. One of us is a political scientist at the University of Washington, and the other is a former elections commissioner who now studies voting laws. We can explain why voter fraud is so rare – especially for mail-in ballots, which have drawn both the interest and concern of many people this year. The goal,...

By Jeff Gruenewald, Associate Professor and Director of the Terrorism Research Center, University of Arkansas; Joshua D. Freilich, Professor of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; Steven Chermak, Professor of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University; William Parkin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Seattle University; and Brent Klein, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina On a Tuesday morning in September 2001, the American experience with terrorism was fundamentally altered. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people were killed as the direct result of attacks in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. Thousands more,...