Electoral Vulnerabilities in the United States: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to put the issues of election integrity that arose in 2016 in context, and to suggest along the way how it is that one should be sanguine about the administration of elections in the United States. First, I identify four integrity-related themes that have arisen in American elections since the 2000 presidential election. Second, I briefly discuss what it means to assess the health of the American electoral system, to help confine the scope of this article. Third, I provide two frameworks for assessing the health of the election system, one that takes the perspective of a typical voter, and the other that focuses on the flow of information conveyed in an election. In each of these assessments, I make reference to research conducted over the past two decades that inform our assessment of the health of the election process. I conclude by bringing this discussion back to the specific case of 2016, providing a preliminary assessment of the health of the election process in the most recent federal election.