There are commonly warnings about electoral irregularities in advance of US Presidential elections.  In 2016, however, these warnings are starker than ever before.  I wrote this for The Conversation about whether the decentralised nature of US elections helps or hinders the possibility of things going wrong:

Donald Trump’s claims that the US presidential election will be rigged have rightly been met with outrage and derision. Hillary Clinton called his remarks “horrifying”; incumbent president, Barack Obama, responded that: “there is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig the election.”

He’s not far wrong. Expert assessments have repeatedly demonstrated that voter fraud is exceptionally rare (as is also the case in the UK, by the way). Instead, claims of voter fraud are often made for more disingenuous reasons…..

Read the full blog here