Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue

The nation’s top political scientists, historians, and legal scholars propose solutions for democracy’s future

In recent years, the sight of gun-wielding citizens patrolling ballot boxes and voting sites has become increasingly familiar. Major news corporations parroting false claims of election fraud, ballot stuffing, and faulty voting systems is the new normal. In an era of global anti-democratic movements, the sanctity of democratic electoral processes has become a major national security concern, and the need to protect elections from foreign interference, disinformation, voter intimidation, and the danger of election results being overturned, are now front and center. How did we get here? And more importantly, how will this affect the future of democracy?

Award-winning authors Julian E. Zelizer and Karen J. Greenberg bring together the nation’s top political scientists, historians, and legal scholars to examine how the lack of stability and integrity of the electoral process has become a threat to national security. Through historical and social scientific analysis, contributors outline how these problems have emerged and propose concrete solutions to move us into a period of greater stability. At once urgent and comprehensive, Our Nation at Risk is the preeminent book on election security and a must read for anyone invested in the fight for democracy.

Julian E. Zelizer (Editor)
Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is the award-winning author and editor of 25 books including The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society and Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.

Karen J. Greenberg (Editor)
Karen J. Greenberg is the Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law. She is the author and editor of many books, including The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State, and The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First One Hundred Days.