Was the election conducted properly? Will mail in ballots be counted and will that count be allowed to stand? Will the US Supreme Court decide the final outcome? And what, in any case, will become of American democracy? In this urgent and timely event, University of Auckland lecturers will use the lenses of law, political science, and psychology to explain this contested election and discuss the implications of the final outcome. This is a recording of the panel gathered at University of Auckland Law School on November 18th, 2020.

* Associate Professor Timothy Kuhner from the Faculty of Law at University of Auckland. Professor Kuhner is known for his critical approaches to the law of democracy. His teaching and research focus on comparative constitutional law, corruption, political finance, and law & society. He is the author of Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution (Stanford University Press, 2014)

* Dr Maria Armoudian from the Faculty of Arts at University of Auckland. Dr. Maria Armoudian is a lecturer at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the host and producer of the radio program, The Scholars’ Circle, and the author of two books, Kill the Messenger: The Media’s Role in the Fate of the World, and Reporting from the Danger Zone: Frontline Journalists, Their Jobs and an Increasingly Perilous Future.

* Associate Professor Danny Osborne from the Faculty of Science at University of Auckland. Danny Osborne is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland. Danny received his PhD from UCLA in 2011, where he studied social psychology with an emphasis in political psychology and quantitative methods. Danny’s research seeks to understand the causes and consequences of inequality, with a particular emphasis on ideology and collective action. His publications include Ideology and Post-Colonial Society and Opposing Paths to Ideology: Group-Based Relative Deprivation Predicts Conservatism Through Warmth Toward Ingroup and Outgroup Members.

* Associate Professor Scott Optican from the Faculty of Law at University of Auckland.He specializes in evidence, criminal procedure, and comparative criminal procedure, and has written widely on criminal justice and policing issues arising under the New Zealand Bill of Rights. Scott is also a co-author of The New Zealand Bill of Rights (Oxford University Press: 2003), the first comprehensive treatise on the protection of rights and freedoms under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.

This program is produced by the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.