Attorney General Merrick Garland filed a handful of lawsuits last month against states he believes are restricting voting rights, particularly the suffrage of non-white voters. In fact, he says those states — Arizona, Florida and Texas — are undermining democracy in the United States.
If America chairs the Summit for Democracy on Thursday and Friday and promotes the importance of free elections, it will sit in a shaky seat itself. Domestically, the 2020 presidential elections have the already previously announced magazine The Economist Democracy qualified as ‘flawed’ has been given an extra blow. Never before have so many Americans cast their vote. But the election loser still refuses to accept the results, and his lies about voter fraud — debunked in dozens of lawsuits — have made Republicans across the country unprecedentedly suspicious of government and the rule of law.
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An poll by news channel NPR showed last month that only 34 percent of Republican voters polled have “a lot” or “some” confidence in the fairness of elections. Among all Americans, 58 percent of those polled say they trust elections. If their candidate doesn’t win, only 33 percent of Republican voters think those elections were fair — an echo of Donald Trump’s views on democracy: he said in both 2016 and 2020 ahead of the election he could only lose by foul play.
Storming Capitol
Add to that the knowledge that on January 6 this year a significant group of supporters of former President Trump was willing to use force to block the ratification of the election results, and the conclusion of University of California constitutional law professor Richard Hasen doesn’t sound so unrealistic. : „We are in serious danger that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said The Atlantic.
The storming of the Capitol was initially condemned by both parties in the US, but within days most Republicans had changed their minds and voted overwhelmingly against impeachment proceedings against President Trump as the instigator of the violence. Of the hundreds of suspects who stormed the Capitol, sometimes using brute force, the vast majority maintain that they are innocent: after all, they believe that their actions intended to protect democracy. As a result, the rule of law for these Americans has changed from a given to a choice. If it works in your favor, fine, if not, you have the right to oppose it, by force if necessary.
The most blatant anti-democracy laws come from Georgia and Arkansas
This year’s empty allegations of electoral fraud have spawned a torrent of state-level laws ostensibly aimed at protecting the electoral system. It is worth noting that almost all changes to the rules in Republican-dominated states are restrictions on the exercise of the right to vote. Voting by mail is restricted in many states. The ability to take groups of voters to the polling station by bus is banned in several states. Polling stations are closed.
The most blatant anti-democracy laws, passed by majority vote, come from Georgia and Arkansas. In Georgia, a Republican majority in that state’s legislature gave a Republican-dominated state election board the power to replace local election officials at its discretion. The independently elected person responsible for the conduct of the elections, the secretary of state, has also been cast aside in favor of this partisan board.
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That is a significant coup, because the secretary of state was called by telephone in January this year pressured by President Trump. Trump asked if he wanted to fabricate a different result. “I’m just looking for 11,780 votes.” The secretary of state in question was a Republican, and he refused to budge.
Adjust result
Under Arkansas’ amended electoral law, the legislature gave far-reaching powers to a state board of election commissioners to investigate complaints of electoral fraud, including complaints about the ratification of the vote. The state board has a majority of Republican members. They may, by law, choose “a lawful remedy, correction or remedy” for a wrongdoing “as the State Board of Election Commissioners sees fit.” The law has not yet been implemented, but the provisions leave open the possibility in next year’s elections to adjust the result after a complaint against it.
All in all, it’s not surprising that Pew Research this week after an international survey in sixteen countries found that, on average, only 17 percent of those polled thought American democracy was a good example.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 9, 2021
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