Pre-APSA Workshop on Securing Elections:

Foreign Meddling, Fake News, and Political Violence 

DATE:

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

LOCATION:

IFES, Crystal City, Virginia (20 minutes from downtown Washington DC)

CO-CHAIRS:

• Holly Ann Garnett (Royal Military College of Canada)

• Charles Stewart III (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

SPONSORS:

• MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL)

• International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)

• Electoral Integrity Project (EIP)

• Electoral Management Network (EMN)

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.

Call for Papers

This workshop welcomes paper proposals on questions including (but not limited to):

• How can the peaceful and secure environments necessary for free and fair elections be created?

• What new security threats have emerged to electoral officials from the rise of information technologies?

• How successfully have legacy and social media platforms sought to counter fake news? 

• How are politicians, be they candidates, voters or party officials, threatened at various stages of the electoral cycle? Who are the targets? Who are the perpetrators?

• When and how is election violence most likely to emerge? How can such conflicts be resolved?

• How do domestic and foreign monitoring and observation protect or spark electoral conflict?

• Have perceived security threats undermined public confidence and trust in the electoral process?

SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

The conference organizers are currently accepting paper proposals for this workshop. Please click the link to view the full call for papers and submit your proposal. Submissions are due no later than March 27, 2019.

American Political Science Association

The workshop will be held the day before the APSA 115th annual meeting from 29 Aug-1 Sept 2019 in Washington DC. See details here.