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The Voting Wars

Chancellor's Professor Lecture by Richard L. Hasen

February 13, 2012

Prof. Hasen is a nationally-recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation and is co-author of a leading casebook on election law. From 2001 to 2010, he served as founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, Election Law Journal. He is the author of more than four dozen articles on election law issues. His book, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, was published in summer 2012 by Yale University Press. His op-eds and commentaries have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Slate. Hasen also writes the often-quoted Election Law Blog. He joined the UCI Law faculty full time in July 2011 after teaching at Loyola Law School Los Angeles and Chicago-Kent College of Law.

His lecture provided a preview of his book, The Voting Wars, which explores why nearly a dozen years after the controversial 2000 U.S. presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in the state of Florida, the problems with how we run our elections are still not fixed. In fact, we are just one razor-thin presidential election away from chaos and an undermining of the rule of law. Why haven’t things improved since the 2000? How has the rise of social media made the potential for meltdown much worse? The Voting Wars answers these questions through a narrative weaving together stories of the key players with insights from law, politics, history, and computer science.

Chancellor’s Professors are endowed positions awarded to a very small number of UC Irvine professors across the campus who demonstrate unusual academic merit.