Over the past three years, the world’s oldest democracy has been tested in ways not seen in decades.
A sitting president tried to overturn an election and his supporters stormed the Capitol to stop the winner from taking power. Supporters of that attack launched a campaign against local election offices, chasing out veteran administrators and pushing conservative states to pass new laws making it harder to vote.
At the same time, the past three years proved that American democracy was resilient.
Former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results failed, blocked by the constitutional system’s checks and balances, and he now faces both federal and state charges for those efforts. Then the voters stepped in. In every presidential battleground state, they rejected all candidates who supported Trump’s stolen election lies and were running for statewide offices that had some oversight of elections.
The election infrastructure in the country performed well, with only scattered disruptions during the 2022 midterms. New voting laws, many of which are technical and incremental, had little discernable impact on actual voting.
Of course America would choose a definition that serves their purposes.
Hey… isn’t letting people vote kind of the whole point of a democracy? When did women get the right to vote again… oops!
The link provides an example of criteria (recognizing that it’s a difficult question) that even a European organization, like the World Economic Forum based in Switzerland, considers acceptable. This supports the claim made in the article. Of course, if you don’t agree, that’s okay too.