Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy is an accessible, engaging read that synthesizes the stories Rick Hasen systematically collects on his invaluable blog into a graphic depiction of the stresses on our electoral systems. The most significant include: insidious allegations of voter fraud to provide cover for voter suppression; pockets of incompetence in election administration, including in critical swing states; and hacking and misinformation—the political “dirty tricks” of the digital age. Under the pressure of intensifying political polarization, these three phenomena fuel the most serious threat of all: incendiary rhetoric about “stolen elections.” This rhetoric, which has spread to the Democratic Party, Hasen worries is undermining the bedrock democratic commitment to peaceful transitions of power. Not surprisingly, Hasen devotes considerable space to condemning not only those who undermine the public’s faith in the integrity of our electoral system through the spread of fabricated claims about in-person and non-citizen voter fraud but also those who make reckless assertions of “stolen elections.”
Election Meltdown, thus, invites all of us to reflect on the long-term health of American democracy. By writing in a straightforward and vivid manner that is welcoming to those outside the legal academy, Hasen invites a wider audience to reflect on the norms that support the democratic institutions Americans have long taken for granted and the role civil society will ultimately have to play to secure the future of those institutions. In a passage emphasizing how norms, such as the commitment to peaceful transitions between elections, critically support democracies, Hasen writes, “We have to act now to take steps so that the next time there is a razor-thin election—and there will be one, sooner or later—our civil society is strong enough to withstand foreign and domestic efforts to tear us apart.” In this way, Hasen has done more than simply record the specific and cumulative risks of an election meltdown in 2020.
Still, for all that commends it, Election Meltdown suffers from both too little hope, and not enough gloom.