Was the US Presidential Election "Free and Fair"?
We hear this time and again on the news - the US government administration of any party (Republican, Democratic) admonish some country around the world (usually African) for not holding free and fair elections.
However can we hold this standard against ourselves? From this article: https://www.ait.org.tw/infousa/zhtw/DOCS/prinDemocracy/election_dem.html - from a US governmental website no less...
So for an election to be free and fair we need:
1. "Universal suffrage for all eligible..." voters, with no restriction on gender, sexuality, disability, religion, race, etc. On paper we have this. Whether the voter ID legislation negates some of this is certainly up for debate. 9/10.
2. "Freedom to register as a voter or run for political office". The first part... yes. The latter is probably much harder to do in some states than others (e.g. to run for President in NC, you need to get 90,000 signatures and be accepted by the State Board of Elections - not exactly "free"
but for the most part this is true... 9/10.
3. "Freedom of speech for candidates...." we got this one okay. 10/10
4. "Numerous opportunities for the electorate to receive objective information from a free press." However I think we might be failing here as the electorate seemed to have had many more opportunities to receive subjective information from a very biased press (all ways, all parties) but we can check this one off. 9/10 because the press is too free.
5. "Freedom to assemble for political rallies and campaigns." I suppose you can count attending a Trump Rally and having the freedom to be assaulted as freedom to assemble... so 9/10 for this one.
6. "Rules that require party representatives to maintain a distance from polling places on election day." The rules are in place, but there have been reports of this being flouted and not enforced - but generally you don't have electioneering in polling places. 9/10 on this one.
7. "An impartial or balanced system of conducting elections and verifying election results." This is where we begin to run into difficulties. Many electoral commissions across the country are partisan, though they do have representation by both main political parties. Minority parties are generally not represented on these commissions. Where ballots are cast on paper, there is a way of verifying the results. Where there is no paper, there is no true verification of the result. This one is rated by me as 6/10, though if more of the USA was on electronic-only voting this would be more like 3/10.
8. "Accessible polling places, private voting space, secure ballot boxes, and transparent ballot counting." Machines are doing the counting... is that transparent enough? Accessible polling places? Some states and counties have gerrymandered the polling places so that there's less in certain areas. Because one cannot generally see the votes being counted, and since there is manipulation of the polling places this one has to be rated 3/10. You have to trust the machine is right... but is it?
9. "Secret ballots"... is a ballot ever truly secret? You go into a booth and cast a vote... but that voting paper often has a number on it, and it was recorded that you voted using that voting paper? But then if you voted electronically who knows it was you who even voted? I'll still rate this one 9/10 for the USA as it would require a herculean effort for a DJT administration to find out who voted for him and who didn't.
10. "Legal prohibitions against election fraud." Oh boy.... these do exist. Maximum points 10/10.
11. "Recount and contestation procedures." I'm going to give this one 7/10 for now. There are recounts underway. There is a procedure to contest the election. However the barriers to the recounts seem to be unfair.
So out of a possible 110 points, in my mind this election scored 90 - A 81.8% free and fair election in the USA. And this is according to standards advertised and promoted by the US Government.
Is 81.8% free and fair enough?
= new reply since forum marked as read
