How to Steal an Election: New UW course examines democracy’s vulnerability

James Long stole the name of his new class — an irony that isn’t lost on him, considering the subject matter.

The name of the course, “How to Steal an Election,” is a nod to “How to Rig an Election,” a book that analyzes the methods the world’s despots use to stay in power. It’s required reading for the class, which Long designed and is teaching for the first time this quarter at the University of Washington.

“I want to set up for students why democracy is worth stealing and why it’s worth it for some leaders to try to cheat in an election,” said Long, a professor of political science. “It’s because the value for the people that win is so high and important. There are more elections today around the world than there have been at any point in human history, and yet there are still all these persistent threats to realizing the democratic gains from those elections. When they’re undermined or rigged, elections can make democracy a lot worse.”

The course, which has no prerequisites and is open to any student at the UW, also highlights the types of politicians who try to steal elections, and how and what can be done to secure them. While Long took inspiration for the course’s name from the book and similar titles used by colleagues who have studied election fraud in the past, he swapped the word “rig” with a word invoked more often today in the United States.

“Stop the steal” was a rallying cry for supporters of former president Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, when a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent Congress from certifying the election outcome. Trump has also tried to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2024 election, claiming that the only way he could lose is if his opponents cheat.

A 2024 poll from The Washington Post/University of Maryland found that 62% of U.S. adults believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected in 2020, down from 69% in 2021. Just 31% of Republicans believe the election was legitimate.

But when it comes to election interference in the United States, Long said, reality doesn’t match Trump’s claims. Long pointed to the 2016 presidential election between Trump and Hillary Clinton, which was influenced in ways Long said the U.S. wasn’t prepared for, or even aware of at the time.

“We don’t have direct evidence that the vote totals were changed, but we do know there was Russian influence into states’ election management systems, as well as disinformation spread online seeking to sow chaos and confusion for voters,” Long said. “Did that swing the election? We don’t know the answer to that. We know it was a close election. We know that it was targeted to persuade voters to move in the direction of Trump.”

As for 2020, Long called it “the most secure election in U.S. history” because intelligence agencies worked to fix exposed weaknesses, particularly at the state level.

“Depending on your political perspective, you might think it’s the other way around — that 2016 was free and fair and 2020 was the one that was rigged,” Long said. “But there’s no evidence that anything ran afoul in 2020. There are persistent threats, and they may become salient during certain election periods. U.S. elections are very secure in many ways, and we’ve learned from the past, but there are all sorts of threats that remain.”

One of those threats is the targeting of candidates, as evidenced by two recent attempts to assassinate Trump. While political violence isn’t new in the U.S. — past examples include the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Jr, as well as the shooting of Ronald Reagan — it’s been decades since tensions ran this high.

Long said these threats have come from Trump himself, who joked in 2016 about somebody assassinating Hillary Clinton, encouraged brawls at his rallies and has already impugned the integrity of the vote by refusing to confirm that he will concede if he loses in November.

“This doesn’t mean we won’t have a secure election, but it does mean that threats to election integrity certainly persist in the U.S.,” Long said. “For somebody like Trump to not only occupy the office of the presidency and commit alleged crimes for which he’s been indicted, but who also wants to occupy the office again to avoid that legal liability, that is something that a lot of countries have faced and puts the U.S. in kind of a global perspective.”

Long has been working on issues of election fraud since the 2007 general election in Kenya, which was marred by allegations of rigging. A doctoral student at the time, Long was observing his first election outside the U.S. He went on to create a class on global crime and corruption, but realized there was an opportunity for a second course focused on election fraud specifically.

Among other topics, Long’s newest class will cover the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, which international monitors called neither free nor fair as Nicolás Maduro, the incumbent, controlled most institutions and repressed political opposition.

The problems that arose in Venezuela reminded Long of issues he saw in Kenya, which he then worked with colleagues to overcome during elections in Afghanistan, Uganda and South Africa. The class will explore these kinds of connections between elections.

“I knew I wanted to teach this course during a U.S. election because I wanted it to be a U.S.-global perspective,” Long said. “It would be an American classroom with Americans and non-Americans there, but people would be thinking about the world together rather than just the United States. There are a lot of different historical and contemporary cases to discuss. There really are a lot of different ways to steal an election.”

For more information, contact James Long at [email protected].