Some Lessons for America in How Elections Go Off the Rails
By Heidi Vogt
During 10 years as a foreign correspondent, I covered presidential elections in 17 different countries, including very rough ones in Afghanistan, Congo, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe. This is my first time covering one in the U.S. and —though the specifics are very different— the pattern has begun to feel eerily familiar.
This is a precarious moment. A pandemic, the challenge of a surge of mail-in ballots, heightened racial tensions and fears about contested results are putting our voting system at risk like never before.
Overseas, I’ve witnessed flagrant voter intimidation, ballot-box stuffing, clashes at polling stations and months-long fights over who won. And I’ve seen how quickly things can go very, very badly. Violent splits can open up in seemingly stable countries and unscrupulous leaders can manipulate uncertainty to stay in power. As many people who’ve lived in more fragile democracies have noticed, some of those situations feel possible in the U.S. right now — not to the same extremes, but enough to be deeply troubling.
Americans aren’t used to the idea that they’re facing the same problems as younger and less stable nations, but the parallels have already gripped the expert community. There’s now a cottage industry of democracy specialists — academics, election observers and diplomats — who have turned their focus from places like Africa or Latin American to the U.S. itself.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/some-lessons-for-america-in-how-elections-go-off-the-rails/ar-BB1aDamE?li=BBnb7Kz
= new reply since forum marked as read
