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And the problem is a lot bigger than Donald Trump.

A woman exits the voting booth after filling out her ballot for the US presidential election at the James Weldon Johnson Community Center in East Harlem, on November 8, 2016. (Reuters / Andrew Kelly)

The United States is no longer a full democracy, according to the highly regarded Economist Intelligence Unit, which each year compiles a Democracy Index that provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories.

The US, a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a flawed democracy, as popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions has declined, explains the introduction to the freshly released Democracy Index.

That would be a troubling announcement in any week.

But coming in the first week of the presidency of Donald Trump, a man who has claimed that election systems are rigged, who lies about supposed voter fraud and who attacks the media outlets who call him out for those lies, the announcement is all the more unsettling.

For those of us who have for many years worried about the vulnerable state of democracy in America, the news is even more troubling because the Democracy Index analysis reminds us that this is about a lot more than Donald Trump.

Popular trust in government, elected representatives and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the US. This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr Trump as US president in November 2016, explains the analysis. By tapping a deep strain of political disaffection with the functioning of democracy, Mr Trump became a beneficiary of the low esteem in which US voters hold their government, elected representatives and political parties, but he was not responsible for a problem that has had a long gestation. The US has been teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy for several years, and even if there had been no presidential election in 2016, its score would have slipped below 8.00.

A country must maintain an 8.00 rating (on measures of the electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture). The US rating was 8.05 last year. It is now 7.98; and index ranking for the US has fallen to number 21just behind Japan, just ahead of the Republic of Cabo Verde. The United States is not ranked with the worlds authoritarian states; its in the company of Bulgaria, France, India, and Mongolia. But the US is no longer ranked in the full democracy category with Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And it is ranked well below social democracies such as Norway (#1 on the 2016 Democracy Index), Iceland (#2), and Sweden (#3).

For small-d democrats who are worried about Trump and Trumpism, the latest Democracy Index provides vital perspective. The new president is a bad player. He disrespects and disregards democratic values, encourages distrust of democratic infrastructure, and expresses disdain for the essential source of information in a democracy: a free and skeptical and questioning press that is willing to speak truth to power.

But even before Trump entered the presidential race, the crisis was real, and it was metastasizing.

Robert W. McChesney and I made this point in our 2013 book Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America and our 2016 book People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy (both Nation Books). We used the Democracy Index and other measures to warn that the combination of big-money politics; lobbying abuses that tip the balance of power to corporate interests; underfunded and dysfunctional media; assaults on labor rights; the gutting of voting rights; and the manipulation of election systems by partisans was undermining the infrastructure of democracy.

Undermining the infrastructure of democracy necessarily undermines confidence in democracywhich we suggested would create a crisis for the United States, a country that already has embarrassingly low levels of voter participation when compared with fully functional democracies. The 2016 Democracy Index provides a fresh measure of that crisis, noting that

The decline in the US democracy score reflects an erosion of confidence in government and public institutions over many years. According to the Pew Research Centre, public trust in government has been on a steady downward trend since shortly after the September 11th attacks in 2001. Donald Trump won the November 2016 presidential election by exploiting this trust deficit and tapping into Americans anger and frustration with the functioning of their democratic institutions and representatives. He positioned himself as the insurgent candidate, a political outsider taking on a rigged system who would drain the swamp in Washington, DC. However, his candidacy was not the cause of the deterioration in trust but rather a consequence of it.

Its fair to quibble with that last line; at the very least, Trumps rhetoric reinforces and extends the deterioration in faith in democracy. And there should be no doubt that Trumps presidency will make things worsejust five days into his term, he was promising a major inquiry into voter fraud that even Republicans acknowledge does not exist. But that does not change the fact that Trumps political rise can be seen as symptom of a broader democracy crisis.

These realities call for a multi-tiered response to Trump and Trumpism.

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It begins with resistance to the most dangerous of Trumps policies and proposals, and with the requirement of solidarity with those who are most threatened by those policies and proposals. But it also can and must address the democracy crisis.

It is more necessary than ever to embrace movements to get big money out of politics and to restore ethics to government, to defend voting rights and to make it easier to cast ballots, to reform our media and to sustain a truly free press. Groups such as Common Cause and Public Citizen, Free Speech for People and Move to Amend, FairVote and Free Press are working in these areas. They have track records of success, even in the most difficult of circumstances, and they recognize the importance of state and local initiatives.

The resistance to Trump and Trumpism begins with opposition to immediate threats to civil rights and civil liberties, and to the dismantling of safety-net policies, programs, and protections. But it must also address the threat posed by an ongoing decay of democracy that has as its consequence the empowerment of a Donald Trump and the rise of Trumpism.

(John Nichols is a co-founder, with Robert W. McChesney, of the media-reform network Free Press.)

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'The Economist' Just Downgraded the US From a 'Full Democracy' to a 'Flawed Democracy' - The Nation.

A new elections program in the city is already seeing some irregularities. In some cases, "democracy vouchers" are going to people who moved out of Seattle years ago. (Photo: KOMO News)

SEATTLE - As President Donald Trump decries voter fraud, a new elections program in the city is already seeing some irregularities. In some cases, "democracy vouchers" are going to people who moved out of Seattle years ago.

Seattle is the first city in the nation to offer democracy vouchers as a way to fund certain political campaigns. However, when the vouchers showed up in a mail box in North Carolina, a former Seattle resident started scratching his head.

I got to thinking, if I received these things in the email, maybe I was still registered to vote in two states, said Tim Gerla, who now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Voters approved the taxpayer-funded vouchers in 2015 as a way to get big money out of local politics. Voters receive four $25 vouchers to put towards candidates who agree to spending limits.

However, sending them to people who moved away years ago raises the concern that potential election irregularities could be triggered. The Seattle Ethics and Elections Committee said there are some challenges.

That is something we're looking into, said Wayne Barnett, the executive director of the commission.

According to Barnett, the commission had its mail vendor send the vouchers to half a million registered voters, including those who are categorized as inactive because they did not participate in recent elections. In some instances the vouchers were mailed to forwarding addresses, including Tim Gerla's.

It would be a huge ordeal for me to try to vote in two states, Gerla said. And of course, the thought never crossed my mind."

Barnett thinks the potential for abuse is limited. He said the commission must also accommodate out-of-state students and those serving in the military to use vouchers if they still consider Seattle to be their home.

We have to look at ways we can keep those people in the system while making sure those who are not returning to Seattle aren't," Barnett said.

Because of the questions raised by KOMO News, Barnett wrote in an email that going forward, the commission will verify that people who use the vouchers are Seattle residents by having them sign and return a form.

For now the voucher program is limited to candidates for city attorney and the two at-large council seats. Depending on its success there, it could expand to other races in the future.

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Seattle "democracy vouchers" show up out-of-state - KOMO News

President Donald Trumps threats to launch another investigation into baseless claims of widespread voter fraud is another assault on American democracy and our constitutional rights.

Rather than spending millions of tax-payers dollars on an investigation into fake claims of voter fraud, the Trump administration and fellow Republican officials should focus their attention on the real threats to the integrity of U.S. elections: voter suppression that keeps Americans from having their voices heard at the polls and Russian interference that undermines our national sovereignty and security. Instead of responding to these present dangers, Trump repeats baseless slander and calls for a witch hunt against his fellow Americans.

Trump is apparently preoccupied with losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. He is reported to have opened his first meeting with congressional leaders with wild claims of millions of votes cast illegally and, according to The New York Times, a story about voters who did not look as if they should be allowed to vote. These voters, the president speculated, were from Latin American countries.

There are additional reasons for concern that free, fair, and accessible elections are not valued in this administration. Steve Bannon, now chief White House strategist, once suggested reverting back to a system where the right to vote is reserved only for property owners. When it was brought to his attention that African Americans would be disproportionately affected by such a system, Bannon responded, Maybe thats not such a bad thing.

Trumps is not the first administration to over-politicize the issue of voter fraud. The George W. Bush administration conducted a five-year investigation that turned up virtually no evidence of fraudulent voting. The administrations firing of several U.S. attorneys is said to have been based in large part on the attorneys refusal to pursue voter fraud cases, a top issue for Republicans. The purge caused such scandal that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned.

In an interview with David Muir on ABC News this week, Trump cited a report that contained data on voters who were registered in more than one state as evidence of voter fraud. (When Muir responded that the author had told him that the data show no evidence of voter fraud, Trump was clearly taken aback and attacked the credibility and intentions of the reports author.)

Being registered to vote in more than one state, however, is not a crime unless the person is not eligible to be registered to vote and lied on the form. Simply holding registration in more than one state is certainly not the same as casting a vote in two states in the same election. Indeed, in Trumps own administration, his nominee for secretary of the treasury, Steven Mnuchin, and one of his top advisors, Steve Bannon, are both registered to vote in more than one state. Trumps daughter, Tiffany, is also registered in more than one state; the Trump administration, however, denies this repeatedly reported fact.

While groundless claims of widespread voter fraud have long been used as the basis for voter suppression at the state level, it has not yet been taken up aggressively at the federal level. That seems likely to change. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), for example, has already once introduced a bill allowing states to require proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, prior to registering to vote in federal elections. Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former member of the Federal Election Commission, has recommended that the Trump administration direct the Department of Homeland Security to cooperate with states that want to verify the citizenship of registered voters. These failed policies fall disproportionately on communities of color and are a recipe for stripping American citizens of their political power and voices at the polls.

Voter fraud conspiracies have been used across the country in order to pass strict photo ID laws and other measures that make it harder for eligible Americans to vote. Lawmakers in Texas used this very strategy to pass their states strict voter ID law, known as S.B. 14. In 2016, the Fifth Circuit found the law to be discriminatory and struck it down. Republican legislators in North Carolina raised similar false claims before passing their states voter suppression law, which included a strict voter ID requirement. That law, too, was struck down after a federal court ruled that it impacted African Americans with almost surgical precision. The courts in both cases, and many more, have found voter fraud to be statistically nonexistent and the burdens on American citizensparticularly people of colorto be considerable and, in many cases, insurmountable.

Conservatives may claim that strict photo ID laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud but, as more than one court has found, their true motivation is more often to prevent certain groupsnamely people of color, students, and low-income Americansfrom exercising their right to vote. And in many cases, these lawmakers have been successful in doing so. In the last election, for example, 300,000 registered voters in Wisconsin9 percent of registered voterslacked the strict forms of photo ID needed to vote. In places like Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the states African American population lives, voter turnout decreased by 13 percent.

At other times, charges of voter fraud are employed as a political strategy to manipulate the democratic process. In 2011, worried that Wisconsin Republicans would lose an important judicial race, one state GOP operative asked his colleagues whether they should start messaging widespread reports of election fraud so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number.? [sic] I obviously think we should.

The fact of the matter is that allegations of widespread voter fraud have no basis in fact or reality. Of the more than 137.7 million ballots cast in Novembers election, election and law enforcement officials in 26 states and the District of ColumbiaDemocratic-leaning, Republican-leaning and in-betweensaid that so far they knew of no credible allegations of fraudulent voting. In another eight states, officials could point to just one allegation.

Numerous other studies have debunked charges of widespread voter fraud. A Brennan Center for Justice report conducted in 2007 found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually the result of clerical errors or errors that occur in matching voter rolls against each other or against some other source. In its review of past elections for fraudulent double voting, the report found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.000009 percent in some states, with zero substantiated claims in others. According to the report, voter fraud is more rare than death by lightning.

Acomprehensive studypublished byThe Washington Postin 2014 found only 31 credible instances of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014. The actual number is likely to be even smaller, since the author of that study included any credible claim, not just prosecutions or convictions. Two studies done at Arizona State University,one in 2012andanother in 2016, reached similar conclusions that voter fraud is vanishingly rare. The 2012 study found only 10 cases of voter impersonation fraud nationwide during the 12-year span between 2000 and 2012. The 2016 follow-up study, found zero successful prosecutions for voter impersonation fraud in five states from 2012 to 2016. That study looked specifically at states where politicians have claimed that voter fraud is a serious problem, including Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, and Kansas.

The National Association of Secretaries of State, for its part, has said it is not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump. Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, a Republican, tweeted, We conducted a review 4 years ago in Ohio & already have a statewide review of 2016 election underway. Easy to vote, hard to cheat. Following the 2016 election, Trumps own lawyer filed a legal complaint in Pennsylvania stating, There is no evidenceor even an allegationthat any tampering with Pennsylvanias voting systems actually occurred.

Indeed, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has concurred: Theres no evidence of that and I think those who allege that have to come up with some substantiation of the claim. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) similarly told CNN, I would urge the President to knock this off; this is the greatest democracy on Earth, were the leader of the free world, and people are going to start doubting you as a person if you keep making accusations against our electoral system without justification.

For months, Trump attacked the American election system with empty rhetoric; his administration cannot be trusted to investigate the 2016 election with any integrity. Already, the administration suggested it would focus on large urban areas where support for President Trump was low during the election. Regarding the alleged fraudulent votes, the president has said, Of those votes cast, none of them come to me. They would all be for the other side. There is no reason to believe any investigation led by an administration that embraces alternative facts will be conducted in a fair and impartial manner. In fact, it is a clear and present danger to democracy that the administration would specifically investigate votes cast in communities it has deemed to be political opponents.

Senior Judge Damon Keith of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a dissenting opinion seeking to protect the rights of African Americans and all eligible Americans to vote: Democracies die behind closed doors. With Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)who has a history of persecuting voting rights activists in communities of color, and who referred to the Voting Rights Act as intrusivenominated to head up the U.S. Department of Justice, and court vacancies likely to be filled with conservative judges who may support strict voter ID laws, the responsibility to protect voting rights has been thrust upon the shoulders of ordinary Americans. Americans must not be swindled into believing lies about voter fraud so that conservatives can roll back the progress of history to pass suppressive voting measures. Instead, politicians must be held accountable when they make false claims about the prevalence of voter fraud or seek to introduce legislation that would make it harder to vote.

In a country where nearly 93 million eligible Americans did not vote in the 2016 presidential election, government officials should be investigating how to make the nations electoral process more inclusive, rather than searching for ways to place additional burdens on eligible Americans access to the polls. Instead of engaging in a witch-hunt to persecute American voters, government officials should dedicate resources to conducting a major investigation into Russian meddling, which was actually found to target our elections. And in the face of voter suppression that cost Americans their voices at the polls last year, Congress should consider ways to strengthen voting rights and ensure voter access, such as by investing in Americas election infrastructure, modernizing registration systems, and restoring the Voting Rights Act. States can take steps to keep their voting lists up-to-date with programs such as the Electronic Registration Information Center and Automatic Voter Registration. Through these programs, state agencies exchange information with each other to update voter rolls and add eligible voters to the rolls in ways that protect the right to vote and facilitate voter access.

It has been said that voting is the most valuable right a person possesses, because without it, all other rights are meaningless. Americans cannot allow Trump and his fellow Republican officials to close the doors of our democracy.

Liz Kennedy is the Director of Democracy and Government Reform at the Center for American Progress. Danielle Root is the Voting Rights Manager for the Democracy and Government team at American Progress.

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Trump's Threat to Investigate American Voters is a Danger to Democracy - Center For American Progress

Marchers took hopes, fears to Washington

The Womens March that occurred in Washington last Saturday quickly became one of the most talked-about activist movements of recent years.

Though an official number still hasnt been released, the most accepted estimate seems to be around 500,000.

Metro officials announced Sunday that Saturday had been the second-busiest day in the history of Washingtons subway system, just behind the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama. A total of 1,001,613 Metro entries were recorded on the day of the march.

LESS THAN 24 HOURS after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Washington was overrun with half a million protesters sporting pink hats and chanting, We will not go away! Welcome to your first day!

For many, the march provided a sense of solidarity and relief, and a release of the tension that has plagued many Americans since Election Day.

Ive been grappling with what I can personally do to express my dissent ever since the election, said Ta Coates, a young photographer from D.C. I think this was an eye opener. Im going to take more photos, be more active, and encourage my friends to be as involved as possible.

Though the event was labeled the Womens March, organizers insisted the movement would give a voice to all causes.

This proved true as women, men and children carried signs demanding equal pay, LGBT equality and health care access. There were signs about climate change, environmental causes and immigration, as well as countless others touching on each significant moment and cause of the past decade.

Countless chants went up among the protesters as they stood in the streets for hours, waiting to march:

No hate, no fear. Immigrants are welcome here!

Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!

Black lives matter!

As the women, men and children stood in the streets, waiting for the speakers they were too far away to hear, they sang songs to pass the time. The sounds of America the Beautiful, This Little Light of Mine and Amazing Grace were heard over crowds as people hugged strangers, passed out snacks and made new friends.

IF THE PURPOSE of the march was to make the voices of millions heard, the mission was certainly accomplished. Outside of Washington, millions of protesters around the world stood in solidarity with the Womens March, marching through the streets of Los Angeles, New York, London and Barcelona, and many others, demanding that their voices heard.

Women and men traveled for hours just to be a part of such a historic event. Hillary Hornyak, a young woman from western New York, left for the march Friday night and drove through the night, picking up friends along the way, to arrive at 8 a.m.

This is a part of history you cant miss, she said. Its not often that you get the opportunity to stand up with so many other people that are fighting for the same thing, and actually feel like people are listening.

The rest is here:
'This is what democracy looks like!' - Burlington Times News

Does democracy require journalists and educators to strive for political balance? Im hardly alone in thinking the answer is yes.But it also requires them to present the facts as they understand them and when it is not possible to be factual and balanced at the same time, democratic institutions risk collapse.

Consider the problem abstractly.Democracy X is dominated by two parties, Y and Z.Party Y is committed to the truth of propositions A, B and C, while Party Z is committed to the falsity of A, B and C.Slowly the evidence mounts: A, B and C look very likely to be false.Observers in the media and experts in the education system begin to see this, but the evidence isnt quite plain enough for non-experts, especially if those non-experts are aligned with Party Y and already committed to A, B and C.

Both psychological research and commonsense observation of the recent political situation (I think youll agree with this, whatever side youre on) demonstrate the great human capacity to rationalize and justify what you want to believe.The evidence against A can be very substantial compelling, even, from a neutral point of view without convincing people who are emotionally invested in the truth of A.

The journalists and educators who live in X now face a dilemma.They can present both sides in a balanced way, or they can call the facts as they see them.Either choice threatens the basic institutions of democracy.

If they present balanced cases for and against A, B and C, they give equal time to the false and the true.They create the misleading impression that the matter is still in doubt, that opinion is divided, that its equally reasonable to believe either side.They thereby undermine and discredit their own assessment that A, B and C are very likely to be false.This is dangerous, since democracy depends on a well-educated, informed voting public, aware of the relevant facts.

In the long term, journalists and educators will likely turn against balance, because they care intensely about the facts in question and dont wish to pretend that the evidence is unclear.They understand that they cannot routinely promote false equivalencies while retaining their integrity.

So ultimately they will tell the truth, mostly, as they see it.And this, too, is likely to harm democracy.Since the truth in our examplehappens to disproportionately favor Party Z over Party Y, and since the members of Party Y are understandably unready to abandon their prior commitments despite the evidence, Party Y will begin to see the media and academia as politically aligned with Party Z.And Party Y will be correct to see things that way.Journalists and scholars will tend to prefer Party Z, because Party Z has got it right about the facts they care about.

Thus begins a vicious cycle: Party Y attacks and undermines academia and the media for perceived bias, pushing the experts further toward Party Z.Members of Party Y become even less willing to listen to expert argument and opinion.

Being human, experts will have their biases.This worsens the cycle.Originally, they might have been more neutral or evenly split between the parties.But now, given their bad treatment by Party Y, they much prefer Party Z the party that supports, respects and believes them.Party Ys charges of bias thus find firmer footing: On this point, at least, Party Y is factually correct.

Party Ys followers react the same way.They believe, partly for good reason, that academia and the media are biased toward Party Z.They begin to perceive Party Y and its allies as the only trustworthy source.

Party Y and its supporters can now appeal to both real and perceived bias to justify suppressing and discrediting educators and the media or even replacing objective scholars and journalists with partisan stooges unmoved by the evidence, worsening and intensifying the cycle.

If the cycle continues too long, the end result is destruction of the free press and transformation of the education system into an organ of state propaganda.

In weak democracies, weve seen this cycle repeated over and over again. Aspiring politicians advocating false or mistaken views are called out by academics and the media.Academics and the media thus become their enemies.The battle is fought in the political or military arena, where scholars and journalists rarely have much skill.Public education and freedom of the press can only be saved if Party Z proves stronger.

This is all general and oversimplified.But its clear in the abstract and in the real world that knowledgeable people can be forced by the evidence to disproportionately favor one political party over another, creating a vicious cycle of bias and partisan alignment.

We might be entering this cycle in the United States.To fight against it, we must allow journalists, educators and researchers to speak freely. Political leaders and their supporters must not rush to the conclusion that experts who disagree with them even systematically are their enemies.

Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at UC Riverside and the author of Perplexities of Consciousness.He blogs at The Splintered Mind.

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What happens to democracy when the experts can't be both factual and balanced? - Los Angeles Times