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Voters appear to be increasingly concerned about the integrity of democracy. According to an NBC News poll Sunday, Americans now rank threats to democracy as the most important issue facing the country higher, even, than the cost of living and the economy, which was just months ago top of mind. The shift may in part be explained by a slight inflationary cool-down, which has seen gas prices dip below four dollars per gallon, where prices were in March. But more than that, the poll seems to speak to a growing recognition, by the American public, that the GOP's sweeping assault on the country's election system has put democracy itself on the ballot.

Politically, for Joe Biden and the Democrats, the news is not all bad, Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, told NBC News.

The Democrats still have an uphill battle to win: The presidents approval ratings are up, but remain in the low 40s; his party has notched a number of legislative wins in recent weeks, but voters as a whole remain pessimistic about the direction of the country; and while the GOP may be running a bunch of dangerous weirdos this fall, it still enjoys a historical advantage in off-year elections that tend to serve as a referendum on the party in power. There are also some caveats in the NBC News poll: For one, Republicans and Democrats may have different definitions of what constitutes threats to democracy. Are they Donald Trump's bogus claims of election fraud, which are Republican orthodoxy at this point? Or is it, say, the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, which Trump has sought to convince his supporters was politically motivated assault that could only take place in broken" country? Another caveat: Threats to democracy ranked higher than cost of living and jobs/economy individually but combined, those economic concerns may still be the biggest consideration for voters this cycle. All of this is to say that Democrats shouldnt get cocky; theyre going to have to fight to keep the House and Senate. Heading into Labor Day, the political dynamics could be worse for Democrats, as Horwitt explained. But they also need to get a lot better and fast.

Still, there are a few reasons to be optimistic. Notably, the poll revealed that most Americans believe the various investigations into Trump's alleged improprieties should remain underway. The poll also bore out a narrowing enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans. Not six months ago, Republicans held a 17-point advantage over Democrats when it comes to voter interest in the midterms. But in the poll released Sunday, that lead had shrunk to two points, with 68 percent of Republicans expressing high interest in the November election compared to 66 percent of Democrats.

The most significant change over that timespan, of course, was the Supreme Courts Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, clearing the way for abortion to be immediately outlawed or dramatically scaled back in half the country. For many voters, Roe's rescission laid bare the dangers of minoritarian rule by the GOP. "You dont have to agree with abortion to want to honor peoples rights, as one voter told NBC News. (Abortion itself, it should be noted, ranked seventh among voters in the polls.)

Democrats have also built more momentum of late with a series of legislative victories, including the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, whose passage was more expeditious than usual, as Politico notes, because Republicans were too busy defending Trump against potential Espionage Act and obstruction charges related to the raid. Republicans do still hold a small advantage in NBC News poll: Among registered voters, 47 percent said they prefer GOP control of Capitol Hill while 45 percent preferred the Democrats. But that Republican advantage could evaporate if voters continue to grow concerned about the party's radical agenda as Democrats rally Americans around a better alternative.

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The Future of Democracy Is Now at the Top of Midterm Voters' Minds - Vanity Fair

International liberal democracy is heading into what could be a grim autumn. On 11 September Swedes face an election that may make the far-right Sweden Democrats part of a governing majority for the first time. It is likely that Italys election on 25 September will put the post-fascist party Brothers of Italy at the helm of a new government. In Brazil, it is unclear whether President Jair Bolsonaro will accept his likely defeat in Octobers election. Meanwhile, US officials have warned about attempts to interfere in the November midterms and global indexes show the health of democracy worldwide deteriorating year-by-year.

All of which is a reminder that elections alone do not make a strong liberal democracy. For the casting of ballots to be meaningfully democratic a framework of commonly accepted facts and norms is required. It demands independent institutions and other checks on power such as accountability for leaders, and pluralistic and participatory civic debates. A degree of social trust is essential. Together, as the Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have argued, these factors create the oxygen of mutual toleration and forbearance without which democracy suffocates.

In recent years, new technologies have careened through that eco-system like bulldozers through a rainforest. Social media and artificial intelligence (AI) especially have contributed to frenzies of fear and intolerance; desecrations of the truth; echo chambers and mob behaviour; the amplification of extreme views; and many new entry points through which illicit interference can penetrate a democratic system. And that is without analysing jobs lost and created, the industries disrupted and the resulting economic divides.

[See also: The war that changed the world]

The conventional response to this democratic disruption is regulation. Next year, for example, the EU is expected to pass a landmark Artificial Intelligence Act that purports to make AI human-centric and trustworthy. It will likely influence governments farther afield, such as in the US, where calls are growing for an AI Bill of Rights. Such measures are valuable if intelligently designed. Yet on their own they are also fundamentally insufficient. After all, regulation is reactive, shaped by established problems or threats that require mitigation. The speed at which new technology is emerging from the metaverse to deep fakes, chatbots indistinguishable from humans, and other forms of more powerful AI is such that regulation is virtually doomed to lag.

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A more confident answer, and a necessary complement to regulation, is the harnessing of new technologies in ways that strengthen liberal democracy. It is to these democracy-affirming technologies that progressive institutions, campaigners and governments are now increasingly looking. I witnessed this first-hand when I attended the first stage of the Tech4Democracy competition in Madrid this summer, led by the Centre for the Governance of Change at IE University in cooperation with the US State Department, to identify those who are pioneering such technologies. Six firms, drawn from a long-list of hundreds, pitched to a jury.

One, called Kuorum, used blockchain technology to provide secure online voting to municipalities, firms and citizen groups. Another, Civocracy, is an online civic-engagement platform a sort of social network on which citizens from a given area can organise campaigns and authorities can consult those they represent. Other technologies pitched included an AI-based chatbot that allows people to fact-check dubious information posted on social media; geolocation technology to improve municipal government; and a platform for transparent crowdfunding of political campaigns.

The European round of the competition was won by a start-up called Citibeats, which uses AI to collate citizens anonymised opinions from social media and other sources, and incorporate them into political decision-making such as by helping the World Health Organisation to monitor Covid-19 disinformation. It will go up against winners from upcoming heats on other continents in a global final next year.

There are examples of democracy-affirming technologies already in action. Both Iceland and Mexico have used participatory online platforms to crowdsource new constitutions. Estonias widely admired anti-disinformation measures use bots to comb the internet for fast-spreading fake news to refute it promptly. Taiwan uses an online discussion forum called vTaiwan to involve citizens in the creation of contentious legislation for example, the regulation of gig-economy firms such as Uber on which rival views need to be melded into a consensus.

What these pioneering efforts share with the competitions semi-finalists is that they draw on precisely those traits of new technology that can corrupt democracies such as network logic, high-speed information flows, big data and AI to turn the systems weaknesses into strengths.

None of these initiatives will single-handedly stop or reverse democratic backsliding. But together they do challenge the prevailing pessimism about the relationship between technology and democracy. They invite us to see emergent technologies not solely as threats to be mitigated but as potential solutions. Most crises contain the seeds of their own resolution. We may come to see that the technology-driven democratic recession of our times is one of them.

[See also: Inside Hopin: how Europes fastest growing start-up lost its way]

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Technology has eroded liberal democracy. But it could also be used to restore it - The New Statesman

Amid a flurry of recent claims that prosecuting former President Donald Trump for various alleged crimes would be too dangerous for American democracy, progressive critics are pushing back forcefully to argue that the authoritarian threat will only increase if such lawbreaking is not held to account.

"The Republican Party has turned itself against electoral democracy."

On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie delivered a cogent rebuke of the hands-off argument and declared that "fear of what Trump and his supports might do cannot and should not stand in the way of what we must do to secure the Constitution from all its enemies, foreign and domestic."

His column followed opinion pieces in the Times by Damon Linker and Rich Lowry warning that the U.S. Department of Justice or others pursuing Trump could set a "dangerous precedent" and provoke future unwarranted probes of Democratic elected officials.

Meanwhile, others have even proposed that President Joe Biden offer his 2020 opponent a pardon with the condition that he doesn't seek elected office again.

The argument that "American democracy might not survive the stress" of investigating or prosecuting Trump, Bouie wrote, "rests on two assumptions that can't support the weight that's been put on them." First, he pushed back against the idea that U.S. politics "has, with Trump's departure from the White House, returned to a kind of normalcy," and thus, "a prosecution would be an extreme and irrevocable blow to social peace."

"The most important of our new realities is the fact that much of the Republican Party has turned itself against electoral democracy," he argued, citing the ouster of U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and public support for Arizona and Pennsylvania's GOP candidates for governor, Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano, who both back Trump's "Big Lie" about the 2020 election.

"Big Lie" supporters "are actively working to undermine democracy for the next time Trump is on the ballot," Bouie emphasized. According to him:

This fact, alone, makes a mockery of the idea that the ultimate remedy for Trump is to beat him at the ballot box a second time, as if the same supporters who rejected the last election will change course in the face of another defeat. It also makes clear the other weight-bearing problem with the argument against holding Trump accountable, which is that it treats inaction as an apolitical and stability-enhancing movesomething that preserves the status quo as opposed to action, which upends it.

But that's not true. Inaction is as much a political choice as action is, and far from preserving the status quoor securing some level of social peaceit sets in stone a new world of total impunity for any sufficiently popular politician or member of the political elite.

Now, it is true that political elites in this country are already immune to most meaningful consequences for corruption and lawbreaking. But showing forbearance and magnanimity toward Trump and his allies would take a difficult problem and make it irreparable. If a president can get away with an attempted coup (as well as abscond with classified documents), then theres nothing he can't do. He is, for all intents and purposes, above the law.

Journalists, scholars, and other critics of those pushing prosecutors to let Trump walk welcomed Bouie's piecewhich reporter Dave Levitan called a "very clear rebuttal of all the we-can't-prosecute-him arguments out there."

Tweeting a link to the column, Adam Serwer, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said that "among the problems with 'just beat Trump at the ballot box a second time' is that the same people didn't accept that the first time, they invented a fantasy for why it didn't count. If the issue with criminal prosecution of Trump is his biggest fans not accepting the legitimacy of that... [they] won't accept the legitimacy of any outcome he does not tell them to accept. Can't get there from here."

Others highlighted Bouie's use of American historyspecifically, the emergence of the Jim Crow South in the wake of the U.S. Civil Warto drive home his point that the suggestion that declining to pursue Trump criminally will lead to stability "is foolish to the point of delusion."

"National politics in the 1870s was consumed with the question of how much to respond to vigilante lawlessness, discrimination, and political violence in the postwar South," Bouie explained. "In the face of lawlessness, inaction led to impunity, and impunity led to a successful movement to turn back the clock on progress as far as possible, by any means possible."

Summarizing the columnist, Nicholas Grossman, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign international relations professor, said, "Not holding Confederates accountable to get social peace led to Jim Crow."

Quoting Bouie's argument that "there is a clear point at which we must act in the face of corruption, lawlessness, and contempt for the very foundations of democratic society," Grossman asserted that "now is such a time."

Linker on Sunday made clear he believes Trump deserves to be prosecuted by Attorney General Merrick Garland for the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and potentially mishandling documents seized by federal agents at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, but also warned of the lack of happy endings, writing that it would "set an incredibly dangerous precedent" for future GOP administrations and likely not prevent Trump from running for president again.

Even if Trump couldn't run or another candidatesuch as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisgot the GOP's 2024 nomination, "How long do you think it would take for a freshly inaugurated President DeSantis to pardon a convicted and jailed Donald Trump? Hours? Minutes?" Linker wrote. "And that move would probably be combined with a promise to investigate and indict Joe Biden for the various 'crimes' he allegedly committed in office."

Some, such as writer and editor Graham Vyse, concluded: "This is well worth reading even if you don't agree with its conclusion. [Linker] walks us through a bunch of very troubling scenarios. We are in a bad place."

Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, similarly said that "I disagree with this [Linker] essay, even though it makes valuable points. No one is above the law, especially someone as dangerous to democracy as Donald Trump. 3-D political chess is impossible to play here; let's start with basic accountability."

Columbia University professor Nicholas Christie-Blick tweeted that the path Linker "advocates is basically to throw in the towelto agree that American democracy is done, that a president cannot be held accountable for even the most egregious crimes. Sorry. I don't agree."

Like Linker, Lowry suggested Monday that indicting Trump "would invite retaliation" from the GOP, adding that "all of the criminal investigations of Mr. Trump and his associateswhether related to January 6, his handling of classified material, the Georgia electors, or the Trump Organizationare being handled by partisan Democrats at the federal or local level who have every incentive to nail him to the wall. This isn't a formula for legitimacy."

"Another obstacle to the widespread acceptance of a potential indictment of Mr. Trump for January 6 is that, absent smoking-gun evidence we aren't aware of, it will be far from a clear-cut case," he also wrote. "An indictment on the grounds that he obstructed Congress or defrauded the U.S. government will depend on novel interpretations of the law and present entirely new legal questions that, at best for the prosecution, will take years to settle and, at worst, ultimately lead to a collapse of the case."

Several critics of the question in Lowry's headline"Can You Tell Me What Would Happen if the FBI Were Investigating a Democrat?"accused him of what Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, described as "whataboutism gone bestial."

Jim Cottrill, an associate professor of political science at St. Cloud State University, tweeted: "This is the biggest pile of horseshit I have read in a long time. The level of false equivalence achieved here is truly remarkable. I began reading it with the assumption it was going to be satiricalalas, it was not."

Pointing to the lines about who's behind the Trump investigations, Cottrill said, "Uh, Christopher Wray might beg to differ," referring to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was appointed by Trump.

Journalist Marcy Wheeler also noted Wray in a detailed takedown.

"Obviously this piece sucks in a 100 different ways," attorney and podcast co-host Ben Yelin said of Lowry's column. "But there's one especially fatal error: He doesn't even contend with the fact that maybe Trump committing lots of crimes is the reason he's been targeted!"

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Critics Call Bullsh*t on the 'Let Trump Walk to Save Democracy' Crowd - Common Dreams

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Even putting aside the ethics of corporate giving to both parties, while legal, its obvious that bipartisan giving is becoming both financially and politically irrational. Bipartisan giving is no longer risk free and can even be actively detrimental to a corporations bottom line. And it is politically risky too.

The Jan. 6 committees public hearings have made it clear that we came frightfully close to losing our democracy. And while much of the focus is on one mans actions and that of his administration, members of Congress also played a critical role in advancing and spreading the Big Lie that has undermined our democracy. Today, those members of Congress who stand with truth barely outnumber those who chose to support the first serious attempt at a coup dtat since the Civil War. There are no longer two parties committed to ensuring our country remains a democracy. By giving to both sides, corporations are effectively saying that the possibility that this country ceases to be a democracy is a business risk theyre willing to take. They couldnt be more wrong.

Corporations have much incentive to preserve American democracy. Capitalism cannot exist without a democracy. As research has shown, democracy is good for business. American democracy has given corporations free rein to expand and innovate to develop new products and technologies that make everyones lives better and democratize access to information. There is a reason that Silicon Valley is located in California and not in Beijing.

If corporations want to continue to enjoy the ability to thrive and innovate, they need to commit to democracy not just in their words, but in their political giving. They must stop financing incumbents and challengers who support the Big Lie and are actively engaged in dismantling our democracy. Its time for them to choose. Either they support democracy and capitalism or they support autocracy.

This isnt just an abstract, moral requirement to do better for the sake of the world though it is that as well. And its not just a requirement that corporations defend the country that has allowed them to grow and prosper though this too is true. Corporations have a business incentive to fight for democracy.

With at least 20 million Americans tuning in to watch the Jan. 6 prime-time hearings, Americans are paying attention. Shareholders, asset managers, board members, employees, and customers are all interested in knowing which corporations are financing members of Congress who support the Big Lie. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, where I serve on the board of directors, has made it easy to follow the money. In the weeks following the Jan. 6 insurrection, hundreds of companies and industry groups committed to pause or stop giving to members of the so-called Sedition Caucus, the 147 members of Congress who voted not to certify the 2020 presidential election. Despite these initial commitments, over half of these companies have now gone back on their word and that number appears to be growing.

By continuing to support election objectors in Congress, corporations are taking another big risk because bipartisan political giving is becoming an issue of corporate governance. Directors and executives should think hard about whether donating their corporations funds to election objectors runs afoul of their legal obligations. Ethical corporate governance extends beyond the fact that the average CEO makes 351 percent as much as an average employee, or that corporate political spending doesnt align with their public messaging.

For corporations, there is no middle ground. They can continue their acquiescence to democratic decline by aligning themselves with those who support the Big Lie. Or they can choose to support truth, justice, the rule of law, and integrity with their campaign funding like the more than 70 companies, such as Nike and Microsoft, that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has found have kept their promises to not give to members of the Sedition Caucus.

Similarly, corporations can make a decision to not provide any corporate or PAC money to any candidate for public office. Either of these are principled decisions.

So yes, Home Depot, Toyota, AT&T, Walgreens, General Motors, and Comcast. Were talking about you and the other corporations that are financing the promoters of the Big Lie.

Shareholders, boards, regulators, employees, and consumers are all watching, because today, youre either part of the solution or youre part of the problem. Choose wisely.

Claudine Schneider, a former Republican US representative from Rhode Island who served for 10 years in Congress, is a member of the board of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

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Corporations, youre either part of the effort to secure democracy or dismantle it. Choose. - The Boston Globe

Washington, D.C.Today, the States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy, and Law Forward released an August update and trend analysis to the 2022 volume of their report A Democracy Crisis in the Making: How State Legislatures are Politicizing, Criminalizing, and Interfering with Elections, which analyzes the nationwide trend of partisan state legislatures considering laws that increase the risk of election subversion. With most state legislative sessions closed for the year, the August update identifies at least 244 bills in 33 states that would interfere with nonpartisan election administration, with 24 of these bills becoming law or being adopted this year.

This August update focuses on three key evolving issues that put the future of free and fair elections at risk:

Legislative proposals and enactments that increase the risk of election subversion

The Independent State Legislature theory: Moore v. Harper and the democracy crisis

Insider threats, the trend of misconduct by officials in trusted election administration roles and other concerns for the future on nonpartisan election administration

To view a PDF of the report, click here.

The trends we are seeing in the anti-democracy space, especially in state legislatures, have a unifying theme: they would make it far easier for hyperpartisan actors to stir up the doubt, chaos, and confusion that could be used as a pretext for election subversion, said Victoria Bassetti, Senior Counsel for the States United Democracy Center. They set the stage for a rerun of the democracy subversion playbook of 2020and its crucial we understand how it all works together. One of the best ways to protect our free and fair elections from those seeking to undermine them is to understand how they are attempting to change the rules in their favor.

State legislatures and their anti-democracy allies are waging a multifront campaign to politicize, criminalize, and interfere with the way elections are run in this country, said Rachel Homer, Counsel with Protect Democracy. This is happening at the same time we see election deniers running and winning primary elections across the country, rising distrust among the electorate in our democracy, and rising acceptance of political violence. Its all connected, and together, its a recipe for a democracy crisis.

As we have tracked over time, the risk of election subversion is evolving, tooand its not limited to state legislatures, said Elizabeth Pierson of Law Forward. Here in Wisconsin, we are watching the U.S. Supreme Court as well as our own Supreme Court issue opinions that could undermine free elections, we have people pushing election lies to fuel campaigns for public office or using their current offices to destabilize our democracy, and we have seen election administrators leaving their posts. This latest update puts it all together to sound the alarm that our democracy is in trouble.

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States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy and Law Forward: Report update details acceleration of state legislative election subversion trend;...