Politics & Polls #16: Voter 'Fraud' & 'Rigged' Elections

Oct 20 2016
By Julian Zelizer & Sam Wang (Produced by B. Rose Kelly and Bonelys Rosado)
Source Woodrow Wilson School

Donald Trump has made it clear that if he loses on Nov. 8, it is because the election was “rigged.” He has warned that there might be widespread voter fraud that will favor Democrats. But does this threat have any basis in reality? Or is the real threat new voter identification laws that have the potential to disenfranchise significant portions of the population? And why, after a century of working to expand the right to vote, have we seen the restrictions put into place? 

Julian Zelizer discusses these questions and more in episode 16 of Politics & Polls with special guest Ari Berman, senior contributing writer for The Nation magazine. A fellow at The Nation Institute, Berman is author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” a book published in August 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ABOUT THE HOST

Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 
Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the author of several books including, most recently, "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." Zelizer is a frequent commentator in the international and national media on political history and contemporary politics. He has published more than 600 hundred op-eds, including his weekly column on CNN.com