(C) Freedom House
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How Citizens and Leaders Can Protect the Spirit of Democracy [1]
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Date: 2024-02
In 2024, 40 percent of Earth’s population are expected to participate in more than 70 elections, ranging from mayoral races in San Francisco and Istanbul to supranational polls for the European Parliament. Some, like Russia’s presidential election, will be effective shams. Others, like the coming South Africa and United Kingdom polls, will be free and fair. Not least among these are the US presidential and congressional elections, sure to be highly competitive and deeply emotional for many Americans. By the end of the year, billions of voters will have celebrated their preferred candidates’ victories or will have mourned their losses, as they scrutinize their leaders’ performance and look to the next contest.
Or will they? In recent years, powerful voices have weakened the tradition of peacefully accepting disappointing results and the very nature of electoral democracy. That rhetoric has been tied to corrosive acts: incumbents manipulating electoral rules to remain in power; the denial of election results, before and after they are known; the dehumanization of political opponents; and political violence.
Short case studies in backsliding
Those who undermine democratic processes and institutions are threatening the health of those institutions, which rely heavily on the conduct of elections but also rest on civil discourse and mutual respect among citizens. Consider Hungary and India, where Viktor Orbán and Narendra Modi were freely and fairly elected, only to consolidate power by undermining the very institutions designed to hold them in check. Orbán’s government has worked to shut critical media organizations since taking office, leaving friendly outlets to smear political opponents and stripping the country’s media sector of diversity. In India, meanwhile, Modi’s government has presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies targeting the country’s Muslim citizens.
In 2019, 10 years into Orbán’s tenure, Freedom House downgraded Hungary from Free to Partly Free in its annual report on global freedom. India was downgraded in 2021. These examples may be stark, but they are not unique; in truth, no democratic nation is invincible when its underlying institutions and norms are attacked from within.
How to damage democratic systems: A roadmap to avoid
In the course of tracking political rights and civil liberties worldwide, Freedom House has observed several concerning trends that impact electoral democracy, including in the United States.
Denial of Election Results: In robust democracies, grievances should be addressed legally through an independent judiciary. Unsubstantiated claims of fraud undermine democratic principles and weaken the public’s confidence in future elections. Upon losing reelection to Joe Biden in 2020, then president Donald Trump filed 64 court cases to challenge the results, but judges found no evidence of fraud after hearing his campaign’s claims. American democratic institutions showed remarkable resilience in weathering Trump’s coordinated campaign of election denial. However, the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and lingering public distrust in the 2020 results continue to threaten American democracy.
Spreading Preelectoral Suspicion: Candidates should commit to accepting election results, even if they wished for a different outcome. But in some cases, elected officials and candidates have chosen to cast doubt on electoral mechanisms beforehand, setting the stage to contest their potential defeats. While campaigning for a second presidential term in 2022, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro primed the pump to reject any possible loss by baselessly claiming that it is “easy to rig” voting machines and “impossible to audit elections in Brazil.” US Senate candidate Blake Masters, meanwhile, cast doubt on the reliability of voting machines and insinuated that his opponent would engage in fraud to win.
Manipulation of Electoral Rules and Authorities: Election rules, openly set in advance, are vital for free and fair elections. But electoral authorities who have earned voters’ trust have also earned politicians’ ire: Outgoing Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has responded with denialism when losing elections in the past, orchestrated an overhaul of the National Electoral Institute in early 2023, cutting its budget, staff, and responsibilities. Mexico’s Supreme Court later struck those changes down, but López Obrador vowed to introduce electoral-law changes earlier this year, only months ahead of an election that will determine his successor.
Dehumanization of Opponents: Elections inherently involve competition between candidates and citizens with differing views and values, but some leaders have done more than engage in debate; some have employed profoundly harmful language against dissenters. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for example, frequently labels opposition figures as terrorist sympathizers. Donald Trump has similarly resorted to demeaning language when referring to protesters and has regularly derided the political opposition as treasonous. By depicting political opponents and vocal citizens as existential threats, leaders are making an already torrid political environment that much more unsafe.
Election-related Violence: Elections are supposed to provide a peaceful avenue for resolving inevitable differences. But this vital tool is tarnished when disaffected actors respond to election results with outright violence. This kind of behavior does not reliably yield the results perpetrators seek; the January 6 insurrection did not secure another term for Trump, nor did Bolsonaro’s supporters succeed when they challenged Brazil’s democratic institutions in 2023. But the events of January 6 occurred as politically motivated violence was already rising in the United States, and a late-2023 poll suggests that more Americans have come to condone such acts in the two years since that insurrection.
Setting a better example in 2024
This year’s elections, in the United States and throughout the world, will take place under a difficult backdrop as democratic institutions come under continued pressure. The rejection and manipulation of democratic principles and processes has contributed to a larger erosion of rights and liberties over the greater part of the last two decades, a trend that will only worsen if left unchecked.
Despite this tumult, citizens in many of the countries holding elections this year enjoy the hallmarks of a vibrant electoral democracy, like open debate and discourse, peaceful transfers of power (the United States possesses a rather long record), and self-correction in line with democratic norms and ideals. More citizens want their countries to join that list: Consider how voters in Colombia and Lesotho participated in more open, competitive elections and triggered peaceful transfers of power in 2022. But in order to enjoy those benefits well into the future, the citizens of healthy democracies need to protect that vitality through their vigilant, peaceful, and continued participation.
Free and fair elections, while essential, represent only one aspect of a healthy democracy; the rest depends on how people behave before and after they are held. Citizens and politicians alike should accept the results of those elections instead of spreading meritless accusations of fraud. And they should avoid the frivolous use of the courts to further those claims; the judicial system should be employed to defend the rule of law and hear genuine grievances, not weaken public confidence in an election result.
Citizens and political leaders should express their dissatisfaction and desires peacefully when grappling with the consequences of elections. Citizens who vote for opposition parties or criticize a new administration are exercising their democratic rights; they should not be labeled as terrorists or traitors. Journalists who objectively and accurately put a spotlight on a government’s actions are likewise bolstering a healthy democracy, not threatening it. Those who say otherwise are risking the viability of democratic institutions and their fellow citizens’ very safety, especially if their aggressive language leads to violence.
Even though we may live in an era shaped by democratic backsliding and institutional vulnerability, the world’s citizens will use the ballot box to voice their support for an enduring set of norms, hopes, and expectations: that their voices will be heard and respected by their leaders, that their decisions will be carried out peacefully, and that they can freely change their minds.
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