https://epaper.loksatta.com/article/Mumbai-marathi-epaper?OrgId=459db38e8c&eid=7&imageview=0&device=desktop This article is from Marathi newspaper 'LokSatta'.
written by Shrikant Aagavane
This is the review of a book in english called ' how to rig an election'. written by Nic and Brian Klass
04/05/2024
How to Rig an Election and New Haven and London: Yale University Press (2018), 320 pp., ISBN 978-0-300-20443-8
Book Reiew by Ivan Jarabinský https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spsr.12323
The new book by Professor Nic Cheeseman and Dr. Brian Klaas is a reaction to the current paradox of democracy today. While the number of elections peak, the quality of democracies deteriorates. The authors’ goal is to prevent democracy from projecting an artificial facade to often de-facto nondemocratic regimes. The book contributes to this goal by deepening the understanding of how elections can be manipulated, aims to provide of a set of measures to prevent or react to such problems.
The book's structure identifies six basic types of election rigging identified by the authors such as gerrymandering, vote buying, repression, hacking the election, stuffing the ballot box, and playing the international community. These strategies are later extended into more general tactics serving as a toolbox for potential manipulators. These topics are depicted and discussed based on the authors’ personal experiences from electoral observation missions in various countries around the globe where they conducted numerous interviews with local stakeholders. These experiences are combined with a number of well-established data sets (e.g. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy (NELDA), Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), etc.) and recent political science analyses. This approach provides deeper insight into understanding electoral manipulations, such as in which situations specific kinds of rigging are applied, how efficient they can be, or how to prevent them.
To list all the authors’ recommendations of how to avoid (or at least decrease the probability of) these problems would take too long. But some of them are cited repeatedly because of their potential to influence elections in many ways. These include increased transparency, voter education, election observation missions and these missions’ willingness to speak out about the country's situation even before the election day. With specific manipulative strategies, other new measures can be applied such as the careful utilization of new technologies, e.g. social media or technological and mathematical tools for gerrymandering prevention, etc.
First published: 21 August 2018
Books: Brian Klaas introduces 'How to Rig an Election' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_XsBf7IRHc
Brian Klaas introduces his latest book, 'How to Rig an Election', co-authored with Nic Cheeseman.