Election law expert tells CNN he's 'scared sh--less' about future U.S. elections

Election law expert professor Richard Hasen wants everyone to know how worried he is — and how worried you should be, too — about the sanctity of America's democratic process.

"I never expected to say I'd be scared sh--less on CNN, but that's how I feel," said Hasen during an appearance on CNN's New Day. "I think that we dodged a bullet in 2020, but the way things are lining up, I'm very concerned about our elections going forward, especially 2024 and the possibility that we're not going to have an election where the official results reflect what voters actually want."

Hasen added that his concerns center not only around former President Donald Trump's claims of voter and election fraud — but around the ex-president's myriad requests for "state legislatures to override the will of the people."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

And now, Hasen claims, Republicans are pushing out "those who had the courage to stand up to Trump" and replacing them with people and laws "that are going to make it easier to subvert the will of the people if that's what the political pressure puts on them to make them do."

On Tuesday, ABC News published "the single most damning piece of evidence yet" in Trump's efforts to discredit the 2020 election — a December letter from then-acting head of the Justice Department's civil division Jeffrey Clark to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy Richard Donoghue, requesting they sign correspondence encouraging Georgia's leaders to overturn President Biden's win.