The World Ahead | Elections in 2024
How to rig an election
Rather than crudely stuffing ballot boxes, autocrats will cheat in hundreds of less obvious ways
By Robert Guest
Men rise to great fortune “more through fraud than through force”, argued Niccolo Machiavelli, a 16th-century adviser to unscrupulous princes. Modern potentates can find similar advice in “How to Rig an Election”, a book by Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas. “In many countries around the world the art of retaining power has become the art of electoral manipulation,” argue the two academics (who, to be clear, do not approve).
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This article appeared in the International section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2024 under the headline “Distorting democracy”
