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Americans have a love/hate relationship with technology when it comes to elections. As with so many aspects of modern life, the act of voting now depends on computer technologies to do everything—from tracking voter registrations to verifying the accuracy of ballot counts. Yet news cycles are full of stories accusing these same systems of undermining elections with hanging chads, paperless computerized voting machines, and the threat of hacking.
Charles Stewart III is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the founding director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. In this talk, he will explore why America—alone among the world’s democracies—relies so heavily on voting technologies and how this dependence has been largely beneficial. But are there compelling new reasons for skepticism in light of the 2016 presidential election?
Co-sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities and the Department of Political Science through the Chester Bland Fund at Clark University