Dr Brian Klaas: How to rig an election — and get away with it! w/@brianklaas

There are more elections than ever before in human history and yet the world is becoming less democratic. How can that be? A huge number of people suspect that their elections are being manipulated in some way or another, whether it’s a vote in a fragile country in sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia, or, say, a contentious referendum in the UK or a presidential election in the US. How much of that is true, and how much of it is just our propensity to be suspicious of powerful people in politics? In this talk, Dr. Klaas will walk us through the tricks of the trade – how the amateurs do it and how the pros get away with it, in this stranger than fiction talk that covers elections from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe

Dr. Brian Klaas is an assistant professor in global politics at University College London, a weekly columnist for The Washington Post, and the creator and host of the Power Corrupts podcast. He is an expert on US politics, authoritarianism, elections, democracy, and political violence. He has conducted field research interviewing election rigging henchmen, despots, presidents, prime ministers, rebels, coup plotters, and torture victims in southeast Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe. He obtained his B.A. from Carleton College and his MPhil and DPhil from Oxford.