( Otherwords.org ) – Breaking news: After years of failed Republican efforts to uncover any proof of widespread voter fraud by Democrats, Republican Governor Ron “Tough Guy” DeSantis of Florida found not one, but 20 ineligible people casting ballots.

Like Donald Trump and a gaggle of other GOP governors, DeSantis has used the phony bugaboo of an illegal voting epidemic as a political ploy to keep true believers believing. They spend millions of taxpayer dollars on partisan wild goose chases — DeSantis even created a new police bureaucracy, the “Office of Election Crimes,” to snoop on voters. 

It was all just silly political nastiness, but then Ron’s dragnet scooped up 20 of the diabolical culprits — about one 10,000th of a percent of the state’s over 14 million registered voters. Vindication!

Who were they? All are former convicts who had previously been stripped of their right to vote and erroneously believed their right had been restored after serving their time — and after Florida voters overwhelmingly voted to restore voting rights for people who’d served time for felonies in 2018. 

Who cares what they thought, bellowed the bullish governor? He trashed them as “election criminals,” conveniently ignoring their Constitutional right to be presumed innocent unless convicted by a jury.

Why did all 20 think they could vote? Because each one had properly submitted voter registration applications that went to DeSantis’ state agency responsible for determining eligibility — and all 20 had been authorized to get official voter ID cards! 

In short, the governor himself effectively told them they could vote — then had them arrested and publicly condemned for doing so.

This self-serving political thug now wants to be our next president, even claiming in a recent PR video that God has chosen him to rule because he’s “a fighter.” But Saint Ron fights the people, rather than fighting for them. He’s a bully — and there’s nothing godly about that.  

Jim Hightower

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.

Via Otherwords.org

( Otherwords.org) – This fall, in the lead-up to the midterm elections, a group of Catholic nuns, Protestant ministers, and other faith leaders caravanned around South Dakota on what they called a “Love Your Neighbor Tour.”

They stopped in grocery stores, diners, senior centers, libraries, and other community gathering spots to engage people in conversation about health insurance. They heard story after story of family members, friends, and neighbors who are having a hard time affording quality health care.

The goal of this tour: to build support for a ballot initiative to help more South Dakotans get the care they need.

Through such initiatives, citizens can make end runs around elected officials who’ve become disconnected from their constituents.

In this year’s election, voters in more than 30 states engaged in this form of direct democracy. These voters enshrined abortion rights in states like Michigan, funded universal pre-K and child care in New Mexico, and cracked down on medical debt in Arizona.

In South Dakota, the “Love Your Neighbor” campaign won big. By a margin of 56 to 44, voters approved a proposal to force their state government to expand Medicaid eligibility, a move that will help an estimated 42,500 working class people get care.

These people earn too much to qualify for the state’s existing Medicaid program but too little to access private insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Since 2010, the federal government has covered 90 percent of the costs when states expand Medicaid, but political leaders in South Dakota and 11 other states have refused to do so.

This is not the first time South Dakotans have used effective people-to-people organizing and ballot initiative strategies for the good of their neighbors.

Back in 2016, a bipartisan coalition with strong faith community support pulled off an incredible victory against financial predators, winning 76 percent support for a ballot measure to impose a 36 percent interest rate cap on payday loans. Previously, those rates had averaged around 600 percent in South Dakota, trapping many low-income families in downward spirals of debt.

In this midterm election season, Nebraska offers another inspiring example of citizen action to bypass out-of-touch politicians.

For 13 years now, Republicans in Congress have blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, letting it stay stuck at $7.25 since 2009. Nebraska’s entire Congressional delegation — all Republicans — have consistently opposed minimum wage hikes. Rep. Adrian Smith, for instance, recently attacked President Biden’s $15 federal minimum proposal as “economically harmful.”

Nebraskans view the matter differently.

Voters there approved a state minimum wage hike to the same level Biden has proposed — $15 an hour — by 2026. The measure, which sailed through with 58 percent support, will mean bigger paychecks for about 150,000 Nebraskans.

Ballot measures like these can send a healthy wake-up call to political leaders who aren’t listening to their constituents. But certain special interests, especially ones with deep pockets and driven by narrow profit motives, don’t necessarily want ordinary Americans to be heard.

State legislatures around the country have seen a flurry of bills aimed at restricting or eliminating the ballot measure process. According to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, the number of such bills rose 500 percent between 2017 and 2021. Dozens more were introduced in 2022, including efforts to raise the threshold to pass a ballot measure beyond a simple majority vote.

The goal of these restrictions? To undermine the will of the people.

At a time when more and more Americans are worried about the future of our democracy, we should be applauding the advocates in South Dakota, Nebraska, and elsewhere who are engaging their fellow citizens in political decisions that affect their lives.

We need more democracy. Not less.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Otherwords.org

The virulent fungal epidemic — election denialism — initially takes root in weak-minded people focused on sports, reality TV shows, and ever-fluctuating gas prices. With their minds captured, gullible GOP voters embrace the growing threats to democracy and freedom represented by the malignant spread of electoral fraud delusions and blatant authoritarianism. These transformed people will not listen to reason. Mesmerized by the Big Lie, they appear to be suffering from a mass sociogenic illness and have nominated candidates also suffering from the same mass hysteria.

In the movie, this symptom of epidemic madness corrupts a circumscribed group of people following exposure to a common precipitant, which is the fungal spores. In our world, the precipitant is the psychotic former president’s obsession that he won the 2020 election and that his victory was stolen from him. It makes no difference that this is an absurd non-reality; it doesn’t matter that the Liar does not believe it himself. What matters is his baseless, unceasing, performative certainty, which has become his mind-melded follower’s “reality” — an inexplicable quasi-religious fervor in some quarters and a vicious, militaristic mindset in others.

The two heroes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers are Department of Health civil servants who are harassed and attacked by the MAGA-like, authoritarian mutants. When one of these public health officials suspects that her husband has been converted into a robotic monstrosity, the other one asks, in horror, whether “he’d become a Republican?”

As the plague proliferates, sleep makes a person vulnerable to the fungal infiltration that replicates them into emotionless drones who become part of the fascist take-over. So too, the apathetic slumber of many Americans makes all of us susceptible to the authoritarian menace that threatens the United States’ democratic system.

The January 6 committee should have awakened Americans to the danger posed by the Big Lie Plague and the easy slide into fascism. However, based on a terrifying recent story in the New York Times whose headline screamed “Voters See Democracy in Peril, but Saving It Isn’t a Priority,” that may not be the case.

More than a third of independent voters and a smaller but noteworthy contingent of Democrats said, “they were open to supporting candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as they assigned greater urgency to their concerns about the economy than to fears about the fate of the country’s political system.” Many apparently do not agree that candidates who profess, over and over, a firm belief in unreality — 2020 election fraud — are so detached from reality that they have disqualified themselves from holding power.

Heeding the frenzied call of convicted criminal Steve Bannon and his “precinct strategy,” white nationalist MAGA mutants, whose feeble minds have been invaded by the Mar-a-Lago Lunatic’s delusions, are flooding into local party offices and demanding to be stationed on the front lines of the next election so they can prevent it from being “stolen.” In this way, autocratic transformation happens slowly and almost invisibly.

In small towns and big counties across Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and elsewhere, respected public servants —

safeguarding the infrastructure of our democracy — have been vilified, harassed, bullied, intimidated, attacked, and driven out of office. One in three election officials fear job-related harassment and threats, according to a Brennan Center for Justice survey.

As in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, selfless law-abiding citizens have been replaced by flaky fascists, who are more loyal to MAGA than to the rule of law and who want to control election infrastructure. Non-partisan election professionals — those working to insure free and fair elections — find themselves in the crosshairs of manufactured election rage. They are getting supplanted by imposters working to nullify democracy.

These replaced pro-democracy election workers are also watching the rise of MAGA-mimicking, pod people candidates, in this year’s midterm elections, and wondering if anything can stop the collapse of our most essential institution. “This election,” said Chris Thomas, a retired election worker in Michigan, “feels like a last stand.”

“Poll-watchers and election observers play an important role in safeguarding the integrity of elections, so it’s important that those positions not be misused to intentionally disrupt or prevent registered voters from voting,” said Al Schmidt, a former Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia who had to move his family and obtain police security. “The mindset of these election denialist groups led to threats of violence and motivated people to physically disrupt the casting and counting of votes.”

Deranged ballot box thugs — sporting masks, wearing combat fatigues, and carrying weapons — have been “guarding ballot boxes” and intimidating voters in Arizona. A Republican state senator called on “vigilantes” to spy on people dropping off ballots, imploring them to use hidden cameras and to “follow voters” and get their license plates — all in an illegal effort to stamp out imaginary fraud through voter intimidation. From tacit support to outward endorsement, the GOP has fostered a movement of cos-playing, “voter fraud” vigilantes.

The leaders of this anti-democracy movement are radicalized, reality-challenged Republican candidates for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 291 in all, who have denied the outcome of the last presidential election, according to a Washington Post analysis. Running in every region of the country and in nearly every state, these election-denying candidates, by definition, subvert democracy by delegitimizing elections. A female Trump, Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake, for example, will only accept election results if she wins. Voters have before them a clear choice: the preservation of democracy or the gutting of it.

We are moving towards a national calamity with “the country’s democratic foundations at risk,” according to Larry Jacobs, a politics professor at the University of Minnesota. Like the fungal spores in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, “It is a disease that is spreading through our political process, and its implications are very profound,” said Jacobs. “This is about the entire electoral system and what constitutes legitimate elections. All of that is now up in the air.”

Financially supporting candidates who are campaigning for anti-voting measures is the America First Secretary of State Coalition, sponsored by pro-Trump, hardcore election deniers including demented rich people like MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Among those joining the delusion coalition are Lake and Mark Finchem in Arizona, Kristina Karamo in Michigan and Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee. Jim Marchant, in Nevada, is the self-appointed leader of this contingent of crazed America First candidates — all of whom could win in these battleground states with their always-close elections.

“The idea of putting these people in charge of our elections is nuts,” said Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan organization. Whatever happens to these Trump sycophants in November, they’ve demonstrated that a not-insignificant number of mind-snatched, Republican voters want them — the cream of the conspiracy crop — to lead their party.

A Qanon collaborator, Marchant says he believes that the Democratic Party stole the 2020 presidential election from Trump, whom he regards as the rightful and legitimate president. In Marchant’s telling, there is a “socialist,” “communist,” and “globalist” “cabal” that is responsible for rigging elections. The Republican demonizing of Democrats fuels conspiracy-addled fanatics like the right-wing terrorist that invaded Nancy Pelosi’s home and assaulted her 82-year-old husband with a hammer.

Despite Marchant and the rest of these unfit-for-office autocratic candidates, the most extreme Republican may be Mark Finchem who has identified as a member of the Oath Keepers, the far-right nationalist militia group that attacked the Capitol. As a state representative in the Arizona House, he sponsored a bill to empower the Republican-led Legislature to overturn election results. Like all of these conspiracy cranks, Finchem wants to ban early voting, eliminate mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes, and even dump machine ballot tabulation and move to hand counts, which are time-consuming, expensive and much less accurate.

These lunatics are one election away from becoming their states’ top election officials. Governors and secretaries of state can tinker with election procedures or propose absurd new requirements, such as having every voter re-register to vote, as Doug Mastriano has suggested. Should they win, these conspiracy-drunk partisans can’t be trusted to fairly administer the 2024 presidential election in their all-important swing states. The ultimate goal of these MAGA acolytes is to promote tyranny and make the Seditionist Madman president again.

At a rally with the Puppet Master hovering over him, candidate Marchant said, “President Trump and I lost an election in 2020 because of a rigged election, and when I’m secretary of state of Nevada, we’re going to fix it. And when my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024.”

Invasion of the Body Snatchers ends pessimistically — America is lost to the hive-mind authoritarians as even the health care public servants are swept along in the tide of madness provoked by the horrific fungal epidemic. In the real world where democracy is at maximum peril, that does not have to happen: these mind-hijacked, pod people candidates can and must be stopped.

Although some election fraud delusionists are running in heavily Democratic areas and are expected to lose, most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win: Of the nearly 300 on the ballot, 171 are running for safely Republican seats. Another 48 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races. Check here to find out where Republican election deniers are on the ballot near you.

Like most people, I want to believe our system of self-government is durable enough to withstand all of this but rational, right-minded people — Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Progressives — need to confront election-denying cynicism and eradicate the spreading infection.

It means paying attention to local elections — not just national ones — and supporting candidates who reject conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of fraud. It means getting involved in elections as canvassers or poll watchers or precinct officers. And of course, it means voting. The task of safeguarding democracy does not end with one election. Looking to pervert the electoral process, the fanatical Cult Leader and his automaton army are playing a long game. Only an equally strong and committed countervailing force will meet that challenge.

If worse comes to worse and some of these anti-democracy candidates win by rigging the election via voter intimidation and voter suppression, the Democratic-controlled Congress could play political hardball. Congress canrefuse to seat the Republican candidates-elect by applying the constitution’s Congressional Authority of Elections Clause (Article 1, Section 1, Clause 1). This plan is put forward in the book The Big Truth — Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie.

Maybe this would set off a constitutional crisis, but maybe not. “No court can second-guess a chamber’s judgment as to whether an election was free and fair or which candidate won a race,” said Harvard law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos in the book. “This is exactly what the House and Senate have done many times before, especially in the decades after the Civil War.” If Republicans win as a result of discriminatory voting laws, Democrats — in order to preserve democracy — should take this provocative, norm-busting action.

The latest polling shows that 72% of Americans believe that democracy is in serious danger. Even more strikingly, 43% said civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor and currently professor of public policy at the University of California, has warned us about the threat coming, “from an increasingly authoritarian-fascist Republican party”.

Nevertheless, there is still a lot that we can do to reverse this alarming trend before it is too late. And the most effective way to do so is fairly obvious: make life better for everybody.

The United States has faced many serious problems before, and we have been able to resolve them non-violently (mostly) for the past 150 years. The difference now has a lot to do with the increasing stress and anxiety that most people are feeling in their daily lives.

These conditions are central to understanding the growing anger that we see everywhere, including, of course, in politics.

Perhaps the most striking example of this phenomenon is what have been termed, “deaths of despair”.

The American Council on Science and Health defines them as deaths due to suicide, overdoses, and alcoholic liver diseases, with contributions from the cardiovascular effects of rising obesity.

These deaths disproportionately impact Caucasian males without a college degree.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there was a large increase in drug overdose deaths alone from April 2020 to April 2021. “The center estimates 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. over that time, a 29% rise from 78,056 overdose deaths over the same period one year prior.” (That toll is twice as many as the number of Americans who died during the U.S. war in Vietnam).

Anger, despair, and toxic “masculinity” is another major factor. As the Washington Post reported:

“Males are overwhelmingly responsible for violence in the United States, according to the most recent crime data published by the FBI. They committed about 80 percent of all reported violent crimes in the country in 2020, including 87 percent of homicides…Men themselves are often the targets, making up nearly 80 percent of people murdered in the country and also nearly 80 percent of suicides.”

Adding to the crisis is the fact that the United States has a much less comprehensive safety net than other rich countries, such as Canada, Denmark, and Japan. Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky notes, “the only other place that has come close with a similar phenomenon was Russia after the collapse of the USSR, both in terms of decreased life expectancy (mostly men) and its causes.”

(In fact, in 1993, I had the chance to ask Mikhail Gorbachev what he thought about the potential rise in Russian nationalism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He replied that, as long as living conditions improved, it would probably not be a major problem. Then the oligarchs took over and life did get worse for most Russians).

The classic examination of this crisis of inequality is, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism”, by Anne Case and Angus Deaton.

Their main point is that, “the deaths of despair among whites would not have happened, or would not have been so severe, without the destruction of the white working class…”

Not surprisingly, the decline in wages, along with the growth of economic inequality, has slowly undermined all aspects of the lives of working people. In particular, the “increase of deaths of despair were almost all among those without a bachelor’s degree.”

In their middle years, the risk of severe mental illness among whites with a bachelor’s degree, “is only a quarter of that faced by those without a bachelor’s degree.” Part of the problem is that the less educated are often underpaid and disrespected, “and may feel that the system is rigged against them.”

And even though black mortality rates remain above those for whites, in the past three decades, the gap in death rates between blacks and whites with less than a bachelor’s degree fell markedly.

Also, we must not forget the role that the pharmaceutical companies played in this horror, as they literally made hundreds of billions of dollars in profits from pushing OxyContin and other opioid painkillers.

The outcome of the 2016 election, the January 6 attack on democracy, and the increasing threats of violence are, according to Case and Deaton, “a gesture of frustration and rage that” made “things worse, not better. Working-class whites do not believe that democracy can help them…”

So, how do we improve people’s lives while reducing anger and the threats of violence? It’s not easy, but it’s not rocket science either.

Improve wages and working conditions for everybody, reduce economic inequality, and provide more comprehensive and affordable services like parental leave, medical care and social services.

Making college education affordable is another crucial step.

Of course, there are many other areas where the United States can make improvements, but whatever the choices, in the words of John Fogerty: “The time is now!”

By Walter McClure | –

( Minnesota Reformer ) – Our Constitution guarantees all of us the right to free exercise of our personal religious and moral beliefs, be they for or against abortion. The law has no right to interfere with what a person believes God or conscience dictates about abortion.

But equally, the Constitution guarantees that no one has the right to abridge the religious freedom of others. No one has a right to use either legislation or court decree to impose their religious or personal moral beliefs on their fellow citizens who disagree. This would establish a state religion or moral belief system, forbidden by the Constitution.

To be constitutional, any attempt to resolve the abortion dispute must agree with both of these conditions.

The problem is, the supporters and opponents of abortion believe they are engaged in an objective moral debate. That is, they believe whether abortion is murder or not is an objective moral question with an objective moral answer. They may be surprised to learn that it is not. In 2000 years of furious debate, no objective, non-religious moral argument either way has been found persuasive to the great majority of religions or of the public.

For 2000 years the majority of faiths and individuals have held that early prenatal human life does not acquire a soul or the status of a human being with a protected right to life until later in pregnancy. A majority have believed not at least until quickening, others not until at least the second trimester, and some not until first breath.

Since they firmly hold beginning human life has no soul or right to life yet — indeed “1/3 to 1/2 of all pregnancies end in miscarriage before a person misses a menstrual period or even knows they are pregnant, and about 10 to 20% of people who know they are pregnant will miscarry,” according to the Cleveland Clinic — to them early abortion is not murder. But for those same 2000 years, a large minority of equally devout faiths and moral individuals have held just the opposite, that early prenatal life already has a soul and is a human being from the moment of conception. To them all abortion is murder. Nothing close to consensus has ever been achieved.

The law of this country must be based on non-religious grounds, not on tenets of one or another religion or personal ethical code not shared by others. It must rest on legally objective moral propositions, defined as those held by the great majority of citizens, independent of their personal religious or ethical convictions, serving a defined non-religious purpose. Because no persuasive objective moral case has ever been found, the dispute over abortion fails to meet the test of an objective, non-religious moral debate.

Because neither the proposition that abortion is murder, nor that it is not, can be legally considered objective moral tenets, the constitutional issue raised by the abortion debate is therefore not “right to life” versus “right to choice.” That is a personal issue that each American must resolve for themself by their own faith or conscience. Instead, the central constitutional issue of abortion is our “right to religious freedom”: The constitutionally protected right of each side to free exercise of its beliefs, including its beliefs about abortion. For the state to legally impose one side’s views on the other would be to establish a state religion or non-objective moral belief system, which the Constitution forbids.

While a moral truth may be absolute to each person who holds it and believes it should apply universally, legally it is not an objective moral tenet unless the great majority of their fellow citizens concur. Therefore all proposed absolute moral truths for which there is no consensus fall into the legal category of religious freedom: You have absolute right to believe it yourself and to advocate all voluntarily abide by it, but absolutely no right to make the state legally establish and impose it upon others.

Thus anti-abortion Americans, who fervently believe all abortion murder, have every right to refrain from it, and to freely advocate that it is murder and urge others also refrain. And pro-abortion rights Americans, who just as fervently believe that early abortion is not murder, equally have every right to practice early abortion, and freely urge others do so also, to satisfy their religious or moral obligations that no woman should be forced to have a child she does not want and, equally importantly, no child should have a mother that does not want it. Imagine the increase in moral character and wellbeing of an America where every child is born and raised wanted, they argue.

But crucially, both sides are constitutionally forbidden to use the law to impose their radically opposite beliefs on the other, a flagrant violation of religious freedom.

Unfortunately, because so many on each side devoutly and mistakenly conflate their religious or personal convictions with objective moral truth, each side — perhaps both of them equally honorable — believes they hold the moral high ground, while the other is guilty of great evil. It is this misconception — that the morality of abortion has an objective, non-religious answer — that has left the nation so sharply divided.

This creates a significant risk that those whom we trust to defend our Constitution will fail in their judgment and do great harm to religious freedom and the rule of law.

Anti-abortion Americans, a very active constituency, have used their political power to stack the Supreme Court with justices whose personal faith opposes abortion. They await the day the court will reverse Roe v. Wade and ban abortion, or remand it to the states to do the same. Most advocates, both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights, do not realize this would violate freedom of religion.

Our devout current President and a majority of the justices are Catholics, and may find abortion deeply offensive to their faith and strongly oppose it personally. That is their right; their religion is not at issue. And I agree with the current court majority that Roe v Wade was poorly argued. It should have been argued on the sturdy basis of religious freedom — that the state may not privilege select religious or moral beliefs of some citizens on which there is nothing close to consensus, and use the law to force them upon others who strongly oppose them. I also agree that right to abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, nor is right to divorce or circumcision or any other religious practice. But freedom of religion itself is Constitutional bedrock, from the Founding Fathers to this day.

The president and the court have all sworn a solemn oath to defend the Constitution. Therefore we fully expect them to honor that oath and defend the religious freedom of all: for anti-abortion Americans who believe abortion morally indefensible, and pro-abortion rights Americans who believe early abortion morally acceptable and necessary for their religious or ethical obligations.

The genius of our Constitution is that it creates space for even a debate this contentious to play out peacefully, but only if those on all sides understand and respect the right of all to religious freedom.

Our president and the Court must wisely and vigorously protect religious freedom and the right of both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights advocates to free exercise of their beliefs, and to eschew any state establishment of the beliefs of one side upon the other.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on Facebook and Twitter.

Walter McClure is a senior fellow and chairman of the Center for Policy Design, where his chief concern is large system architecture.

Via Minnesota Reformer

Defending democracy has suddenly become one of the central challenges of our age. The land war in Ukraine is widely considered a front line between autocratic rule and democratic freedom. The United States continues to absorb the meaning of the riot that took place on January 6 2021 in an attempt to overthrow the result of the previous year’s election. Elsewhere, concerns have been raised that the pandemic could have provided cover for governments to postpone elections.

Elections are an essential part of democracy. They enable citizens to hold their governments to account for their actions and bring peaceful transitions in power. Unfortunately, elections often fall short of these ideals. They can be marred by problems such as voter intimidation, low turnout, fake news and the under-representation of women and minority candidates.

Our new research report provides a global assessment of the quality of national elections around the world from 2012-21, based on nearly 500 elections across 170 countries. The US is the lowest ranked liberal democracy in the list. It comes just 15th in the 29 states in the Americas, behind Costa Rica, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago and others, and 75th overall.

Why is the United States so low?

There were claims made by former president Donald Trump of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Theses claims were baseless, but they still caused the US elections ranking to fall.

Elections with disputed results score lower on our rankings because a key part of democracy is the peaceful transition of power through accepted results, rather than force and violence. Trump’s comments led to post-election violence as his supporters stormed the Capitol building and sowed doubt about the legitimacy of the outcome amongst much of America.

This illustrates that electoral integrity is not just about designing laws – it is also dependent on candidates and supporters acting responsibly throughout the electoral process.

Problems with US elections run much deeper than this one event, however. Our report shows that the way electoral boundaries are drawn up in the US are a main area of concern. There has been a long history of gerrymandering, where political districts are craftily drawn by legislators so that populations that are more likely to vote for them are included in a given constituency – as was recently seen in North Carolina.

Voter registration and the polls is another problem. Some US states have recently implemented laws that make it harder to vote, such as requiring ID, which is raising concern about what effect that will have on turnout. We already know that the costs, time and complexity of completing the ID process, alongside the added difficulties for those with high residential mobility or insecure housing situations, makes it even less likely that under-represented groups will take part in elections.

Nordics on top, concern about Russia

The Nordic countries of Finland, Sweden and Denmark came out on top in our rankings. Finland is commonly described as having a pluralistic media landscape, which helps. It also provides public funding to help political parties and candidates contest elections. A recent report from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights found a “high level of confidence in all of the aspects of the electoral process”.

Cape Verde has the greatest quality of electoral integrity in Africa. Taiwan, Canada and New Zealand are ranked first for their respective continents.

Electoral integrity in Russia has seen a further decline following the 2021 parliamentary elections. A pre-election report warned of intimidation and violence against journalists, and the media “largely promote policies of the current government”. Only Belarus ranks lower in Europe.

Globally, electoral integrity is lowest in Comoros, the Central African Republic and Syria.

Money matters

How politicians and political parties receive and spend money was found to be the weakest part of the electoral process in general. There are all kinds of threats to the integrity of elections that revolve around campaign money. Where campaign money comes from, for example, could affect a candidate’s ideology or policies on important issues. It is also often the case that the candidate who spends the most money wins – which means unequal opportunities are often part and parcel of an election.

It helps when parties and candidates are required to publish transparent financial accounts. But in an era where “dark money” can be more easily transferred across borders, it can be very hard to trace where donations really come from.

There are also solutions for many of the other problems, such as automatic voter registration, independence for electoral authorities, funding for electoral officials and electoral observation.

Democracy may need to be defended in battle, as we are currently seeing in Ukraine. But it also needs to be defended before it comes to all-out conflict, through discussion, protest, clicktivism and calls for electoral reforms.

Toby James, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of East Anglia and Holly Ann Garnett, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Royal Military College of Canada

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

That the Taliban council in Kabul was willing to meet with these former leaders is a little remarkable. When they took Kabul in 1996, they just hanged the former president, Najibullah, the leader of the Afghanistan Communist Party. It remains to be seen, however, whether they won’t just marginalize all the existing political forces in the country.

Mujahid said that the former leaders were assured that they would be partners, and that their counsel would be taken seriously. Some observers feel that the Taliban are using these meetings to project an image of moderation to the international community.

Some Afghan politicians, such as Ata Muhammad Nur, warned that anything less than a government of national unity would not be accepted. He is a leader of the Jami’at-i Islami and served as governor of Balkh province for some fifteen years until 2018. The Jami’at-i Islami is the political vehicle of Muslim fundamentalist Tajiks and formed part of the 1980s Mujahidin resistance to Soviet occupation. It is less hard line than the Taliban.

Tolo also reports that prominent Afghan women are hoping against hope to preserve some of their advances of the past 20 years. It quotes Fauzia Kofi, a former member of the Afghanistan parliament, as saying that “without women, the structure of the future government will not be complete.” She said women must be involved in decision-making: “I think Afghan women need to be more cohesive than ever,” she said. She said they would have to assert themselves, since it isn’t acceptable for them to watch from the sidelines.

One social activist named Yasra [Afghans often have just one name] said, “If the government is one of national unity and if its collapse is to be avoided, the participation of women in the Islamic Emirate must not be made invisible.”

Tariq Farhadi, an expatriate political scientist resident in Switzerland said, “A government of national unity in Afghanistan would be a government that represents women and all ethnic groups in Afghanistan. If it is not to be this way, a government that is only Taliban will not by accepted by the Afghan people in the long run.”

So far the Taliban have not cracked down hard on women in Kabul (pop. 4.4 million), but some reports indicate that in the countryside they are regimenting women.

Tolo concluded, “A Taliban spokesman did not comment, but said before the Taliban that women could be present, educated and work within the framework of Islamic principles.”

—

Bonus Video:

TRT World: “Why did the Taliban meet with Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah?”

The warning from democracy advocates is clear: Kill the filibuster and pass the For the People Act, or our democracy won’t survive.

By Peter Certo |

( Otherwords.org) – The American political system is complicated, but fixing it doesn’t have to be.

Voters of all stripes broadly agree on the kinds of changes they’d like to see. We need less money in politics. It should be easier to vote — early, in person, or by mail. And voters should be able to pick their own representatives, not the other way around.

The For the People Act, which passed the House earlier this year, would do all of these things. It includes new ethics rules for members, protects and expands the right to vote, and would restrict the extreme partisan gerrymandering that’s become commonplace. No wonder it’s popular — around two-thirds of Americans tell pollsters they support it.

It’s also, for now, doomed. And with a wave of voter suppression laws, new gerrymandering schemes, and ongoing efforts to discredit the 2020 election results still underway, that’s a very dangerous development for our democracy.

Explaining why reveals some truly absurd things about our system. For one thing, the law just “failed” by a party-line Senate vote of 50-50 — 50 Democrats for, 50 Republicans against.

Ordinarily, 50 votes should be enough to pass something in the Senate when the vice president supports it, as Kamala Harris does. But thanks to an arcane Senate tactic called the filibuster, opponents of legislation can force supporters to come up with 60 votes, instead of a simple majority.

It gets even more absurd when you realize that those 50 Democrats represent over 40 million more Americans than those 50 Republicans. And with the filibuster, Republicans representing just 20 percent of us can easily stop legislation that overwhelming majorities support.

The filibuster is how Republicans are holding up everything from universal background checks on gun purchases to popular laws that would protect the environment, the right to form unions, or now voting rights.

Republicans are champions of the filibuster now, but it was only a few years ago that they weakened it so they could pack the Supreme Court with unpopular nominees like Brett Kavanaugh, who was credibly accused of sexual assault.

Meanwhile, in states across the country, filibuster-free Republican legislatures are pushing hundreds of laws that will make it much harder to vote — or even, in some cases, let those same lawmakers overrule decisions made by voters.

Now that they’re in power, the Democrats could get rid of the filibuster. Hundreds of historians and political scientists, alarmed by the state-level onslaught against democracy, have warned that they’ll need to do just that. So too have hundreds of faith, labor, voting rights, and environmental groups.

Kill the filibuster and pass the For the People Act, they urge, or our democracy may not survive.

But a small number of Democrats — notably Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) — have steadfastly refused. In high-profile op-eds, they’ve called the filibuster essential to democracy and bipartisanship.

These claims are absurd. Plainly, the filibuster is enabling an extremely partisan assault on our democracy. If you commit to bipartisanship with a party that’s waging an all-out war on democracy, the only bipartisan thing you’ll win is its demise.

For now, pro-democracy groups are stepping up their pressure campaigns.

The Poor People’s campaign is marching on Manchin and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. Others are targeting the Senate’s Democratic leaders, who are only in power because an extraordinary mobilization last year helped them win the Senate despite the map being tilted toward Republicans by over 40 million people.

But the truth is, the movements and the voters have done their part to protect our democracy. If senators don’t do theirs, they may well deserve to lose — but not if they take our democracy with them. Tell your senators: End the filibuster, pass the For the People Act.

Via Otherwords.org

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

MSNBC: “‘That Is How Democracy Dies’: Single-Party Power Grab Flagged By Voting Rights Advocates”

Arizona may keep two voting laws that Republicans say protect election integrity and Democrats believe will make it harder for some residents to cast ballots.

That’s the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, one of the decade’s most important voting rights cases.

One Arizona law challenged in the case, H.B. 2023, makes it a felony for anyone other than a family member, caregiver or postal worker to collect and deliver ballots. The other requires ballots to be cast in the assigned precinct where a voter lives. If a person votes at the wrong polling place, Arizona election officials will reject their ballot.

The Democratic National Committee argued at the Supreme Court that both Arizona rules disproportionately hurt minority voters. The majority of justices, split 6-to-3 along ideological lines, disagreed.

“Voting necessarily requires some effort and compliance with some rules,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court’s majority on July 1, 2021. Merely making it more “inconvenient” for certain groups to vote does not violate federal law, according to the court.

The ruling will have national consequences. Arizona is one of 14 states restricting third-party ballot collection. It is one of 26 that require in-precinct voting.

The Supreme Court’s decision makes it more difficult to legally challenge such laws, which, according to our research on elections, significantly affect voting, particularly among racial minorities and the poor.

From Arizona to the Supreme Court

In Arizona, nearly 80% of voters in 2018 cast their ballots by mail. But mail service is not always available in rural areas of the state where many Hispanic and Native Americans live. Only 18% of Native Americans in the state, for example, have access to home mail delivery.

The Tohono O’odham reservation, which covers an area larger than Rhode Island and Delaware, has no home delivery and only one post office. These rural voters often rely on friends or get-out-the-vote workers to deliver their ballots to polling stations.

The burdens on rural and tribal voters were cited in a 2016 lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee to block the Arizona ballot collection ban and out-of-precinct vote restriction. The Democratic National Committee claimed both policies violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits practices that “result in a denial or abridgment of the right (to vote) on account of race or color.”

The lawsuit, which was supported by Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, also argued that the ballot collection ban purposely targeted minority voters. That would violate the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits states from intentionally denying the right to vote on account of race.

Arizona’s Republican attorney general and the state’s Republican Party argued the laws were race-neutral restrictions that do not impede Arizonans’ equal opportunity to vote and were enacted to safeguard election integrity.

The case reached the Supreme Court after an appeal process in which the full Arizona Ninth Circuit Court ultimately determined that the state’s ballot collection ban violated both Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment because minority voters were more likely than nonminorities to rely on others to return their ballots. And the law could not be credibly defended as an election integrity measure because judges saw no evidence that third-party ballot collection led to vote fraud in the past.

The appeals court also found that the out-of-precinct policy violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Arizona officials frequently changed polling places in urban counties, so voters there easily made mistakes. In 2016, 3,709 out-of-precinct Arizona ballots were rejected, and minority voters were twice as likely as whites to have their ballots discarded in that process.

The justices’ reasoning

In deciding against Arizona in 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court relied on a “results test.” This means that a law does not require proof of an intent to discriminate to be struck down. Judges ask only whether the law disproportionately affects historically disadvantaged groups.

In overturning the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court concluded the Arizona laws did not intentionally discriminate and rejected the logic of the “results test.”

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act still prevents states from enacting voting rules that purposely discriminate. But proving intentional discrimination is much more difficult than showing a law disproportionately impacts minority voting.

The three liberal justices on the court, led by Justice Elena Kagan, dissented.

The “Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses,” Kagan wrote.

Electoral consequences

The Brnovich ruling means Arizona’s voting restrictions stand. It also gives other states greater latitude when adopting similar rules and limits the federal government’s ability to police restrictive voting practices.

Since the 2020 presidential election, legislators in at least 48 states have introduced 389 so-called “election integrity” bills placing new restrictions on voting. Of these, 22 have been enacted.

For example, Georgia’s March 2021 election law imposes new limits on the use of absentee ballots, makes it a crime for outside groups to provide food and water to voters waiting at polling stations and hands greater control over election administration to the Republican-led state legislature.

On June 25 the U.S. Department of Justice sued Georgia, arguing these rules violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and that Georgia’s law is intended to discriminate.

Before 2013, states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval before enacting new voting laws, under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. But in 2013, the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder – an Alabama voting rights case – dismantled these procedures.

As a “preclearance” state, Arizona was previously blocked by the federal government from enacting voter restrictions like H.B. 2023. Other former preclearance states that have passed restrictive laws since 2013 include Georgia, Texas and Florida.

Since Shelby County v. Holder, voting rights advocates have had to rely on a different part of the Voting Rights Act – Section 2 – to block these restrictive voting laws. Brnovich v. DNC was the first Supreme Court test of this strategy.

The court’s decision severely cripples it, further eroding the Voting Rights Act.
Attention now shifts to Congress to see whether it will respond.

This is an updated version of an article originally published June 8, 2021.

Cornell William Clayton, C.O. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Washington State University and Michael Ritter, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Washington State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

MSNBC: “DNC Chair: SCOTUS Ruling Was A ‘Kick To The Gut’ For Voting Rights” >/a>