Securing Elections: Foreign Meddling, Fake News, and Political Violence

Elections come under threat from a variety of fronts, be that foreign interference or cyber-attacks, violent conflicts stemming from electoral events, or targeted attacks against politicians in person or online.

Examples of these scenarios are widespread, from elections being postponed in Haiti and Nigeria due to violence, to cases of foreign meddling in American elections and Baltic states. Security is a key challenge to electoral integrity and it is of vital interest to academics, policymakers, security forces, and electoral officials alike.

The Securing Elections: Foreign Meddling, Fake News, and Political Violence workshop will consider how elections can be protected from the variety of security threats that emerge during the electoral cycle. It will take place on Wednesday, August 28, 2019 in Crystal City, Virginia (20 minutes from downtown Washington DC).

For more details, visit: https://electionlab.mit.edu/events/2019-apsa-workshop

Sponsors: MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL), International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), Electoral Management Network (EMN)

Previous Events

• “Defending Democracy: Confronting Cyber-Threats at Home and Abroad,” Chair, Co-Sponsored by the Canadian Defense Association Institute, Royal Military College of Canada, Telfer School (University of Ottawa), the SERENE-RISC Cybersecurity Network, and he Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Canada (2018)
• “New Challenges in Electoral Management,” Co-Chaired with Toby James, Co-Sponsored by the Electoral Management Network, the Electoral Integrity Project, the MIT Election Sciences and Data Lab, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA (2018)
• “Building Better Elections: Election Management in Comparative Perspective,” Co-Chaired with Toby James, Section at the European Consortium for Political Research Annual Meeting, Oslo, Norway (2017).
• “The Hidden Challenges of Electoral Integrity,” Co-Chaired with Margarita Zavadskaya, Section at the European Consortium for Political Research Annual Meeting, Montreal QC (2015).