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Elections are the bedrock of democracy, essential for choosing representatives and holding them accountable.

The U.S. is a flawed democracy. The Electoral College and the Senate make voters in less populous states far more influential than those in the more populous: Wyoming residents have almost four times the voting power of Californians.

Ever since the Civil War, however, reforms have sought to remedy other flaws, ensuring that citizenships full benefits, including the right to vote, were provided to formerly enslaved people, women and Native Americans; establishing the constitutional standard of one person, one vote; and eliminating barriers to voting through the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But the Supreme Court has, in recent years, narrowly construed the Voting Rights Act and limited courts ability to redress gerrymandering, the drawing of voting districts to ensure one party wins.

The 2020 election revealed even more disturbing threats to democracy. As I explain in my book, How Autocrats Seek Power, Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 but refused to accept the results. He tried every trick in the book and then some to alter the outcome of this bedrock exercise in democracy.

A recent New York Times story reports that when it comes to Trumps time in office and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics. This, then, is a refresher about Trumps handling of the election, both before and after Nov. 3, 2020.

Trump began with a classic autocrats strategy casting doubt on elections in advance to lay the groundwork for challenging an unfavorable outcome.

Despite his efforts, Trump was unable to control or change the election results. And that was because of the work of others to stop him.

Here are four things Trump tried to do to flip the election in his favor and examples of how he was stopped, both by individuals and democratic institutions.

Anticipating defeat

Expecting to lose in November 2020, in part because of his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump proclaimed that all over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. He called mail ballots a very dangerous thing. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and aide, declined to commit one way or the other about whether the election would be held in November, because of the COVID pandemic. No efforts to postpone the election ensued.

Trump warned that Russia and China would be able to forge ballots, a myth echoed by Attorney General William Barr. Trump illegally threatened to have law enforcement officers at polling places. He falsely asserted that Kamala Harris doesnt meet the requirements for serving as vice president because her parents were immigrants. Asked if he would agree to a transition if he lost, he responded: There wont be a transfer, frankly. Therell be a continuation.

Threatening litigation

Aware that polls showed Biden ahead by 8 percentage points, Trump declared, As soon as that election is over, were going in with our lawyers, and they did just that. Adviser Steve Bannon correctly predicted that on Election Night, Trumps gonna walk into the Oval (Office), tweet out, Im the winner. Game over, suck on that.

Trump followed the script, asserting at 2:30 am: we did win this election. This is a major fraud in our nation, though the actual results werent clear until days later, when, on Nov. 7, the networks declared Biden had won.

Although many advisers said he had lost, Trump kept claiming fraud, repeating Rudy Giulianis false allegation that Dominion election machines had switched votes a lie for which Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to settle the defamation case brought by Dominion.

Taking direct action

Trump allies pressured state legislators to create false, alternative slates of electors as a key strategy for overturning the election. Trump contemplated declaring an emergency, ordering the military to seize voting machines and replacing the attorney general with a yes-man who would pressure state legislatures to change their electoral votes.

Encouraging violence

Trump summoned supporters to protest the Jan. 6 certification by Congress, boasted it would be wild, and encouraged them to march on the Capitol and fight like hell, promising to accompany them. Once they had attacked the Capitol, he delayed for four hours before asking them to stop.

Yet Trumps efforts to overturn the election failed.

Trump claimed that voting by mail produced rampant fraud, but state legislatures let voters vote by mail or in drop boxes because of the pandemic. Postal Service workers delivered those ballots despite actions taken by Trumps postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, that made processing and delivery more difficult.

DeJoy denied any sabotage in testimony before Congress.

Most state election officials, regardless of party, loyally did their jobs, resisting Trumps pressure to falsify the outcome. Courts rejected all but one of Trumps 62 lawsuits aimed at overturning the election. Government lawyers refused to invoke the Insurrection Act and authorize the military to seize voting machines. The military remained scrupulously apolitical. And Vice President Mike Pence presided over the certification, in which 43 Republican senators and 75 Republican representatives joined all the Democrats to declare Biden the winner.

That experience contains invaluable lessons about what to expect in 2024 and how to defend the integrity of elections.

Read more:
Trump nearly derailed democracy once here's what to watch out for in reelection campaign - The Conversation Indonesia

The strategy of Indonesian president Joko Widodoknown by all as Jokowihas worked: his chosen successor, Prabowo Subianto, and his own son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, were elected president and vice-president on February 14 in a landslide, with more than 58 percent of the vote. It is really Jokowis victory, though, long in the planning and enormously consequential. He has secured power for Prabowo and Gibran by overseeing a gradual hollowing out of Indonesias hard-won democratic system while maintaining his own sky-high popularity.

Indonesia is the worlds third-largest democracy, and Jokowi became the face of its success in emerging from decades of dictatorship. Now he has corrupted that success. He couldnt run for a third term, so he anointed Prabowo, a former general who was once denied a US visa because of allegations of human rights abuses in the 1990s, and Gibran, a businessman and the mayor of Solo, who was too young to be on the ballot until a surprising Constitutional Court decision cleared the way. The losing candidates in the three-way racethe former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan and the former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowoare challenging the results and claim that Jokowi and his government unfairly meddled in the election, but the outcome is unlikely to change, given the large margin of victory and sparse evidence of outright vote rigging. The meddling that mattered took place before election day.

Two nights before the polls opened, I attended an event called A Prayer for Truth and Justice, organized by activists and artists from the Reformasi movement that in 1998 ousted General Suharto after thirty-two years of military dictatorship. They gathered at Utan Kayu, a community center in East Jakarta that was one of the command posts for the uprising against Suharto. A procession of dancers, singers, poets, academics, and student activists took to the outdoor stage to protest what they called Jokowis rigged election. An minence grise of Reformasi, the eighty-two-year-old journalist, poet, writer, and painter Goenawan Mohamad, was there. He had been one of the presidents earliest supporters and was active in his 2014 presidential campaign, when Jokowi became the first nonelite politician to win direct election after the repression and corruption of the Suharto era.

All that has changed, Goenawan told me: Jokowi is a traitor and he betrayed Reformasi when he accepted the Constitutional Court ruling, issued in October, that the thirty-six-year-old Gibran could run despite the constitutions requirement that candidates for president and vice-president be at least forty. The campaign has been rigged to ensure Prabowos victory. It is hubris and against democracy, Goenawan said. We are here to build up pockets of resistance. From the stage, a young poet read a famous poem by Widji Thukul, a prodemocracy activist who was kidnapped in 1998 on Prabowos orders and has not been seen since.

All the singing and the chants of We were duped by Jokowi and Resist and fight belied the funereal mood. The anti-Jokowi resistance was too little, too late. By then the polls were clear that Prabowo would win. Like Goenawan, most of those gathered that night had been exuberant Jokowi supporters well into the presidents second term.

Jokowis ability to co-opt large swaths of Indonesian society while consolidating immense power is a remarkable and complicated tale. His success with the Utan Kayu and Reformasi supporters provided a useful base that he steadily and deliberately expanded. By the time Goenawan and many others turned against him, Jokowi had perfected his increasingly authoritarian hold on power and had set in motion his plan to secure his influence after his term ended through Prabowo and his son. Most importantly, he had assiduously built his presidency and his popularity on three pillars: maintaining stability, suppressing the threat of radical Islamists and their demand for political dominance, and delivering development, from countless new roads to a gleaming high-speed train to cash handouts from the state. As the election approached, Jokowis approval rating hovered near 80 percent. He handed out free rice and cash on the campaign trail. He never explicitly endorsed Prabowo and Gibran, but the message was clear: a vote for them was a vote for a continuation of his rule.

How Jokowi came to dominate Indonesias sprawling political landscape and became the first president to determine his successor provides an after-the-fact subtext to The Coalitions Presidents Make: Presidential Power and Its Limits in Democratic Indonesia by Marcus Mietzner. While Mietzner, an Australian National University professor and leading scholar of Indonesia, wrote this important book long before the election, it offers a road map of what has happened. His theme is Indonesias never-ending quest for political stability, and he wonders if that quest is itself the source of democracys decay. Time and again, the answer is yes.

Mietzners starting point is the chaos that erupted across this archipelago of 17,000 islands strewn along the equator after Suhartos ouster. Indonesia faced the challenge of creating a new political structure that would be acceptable to its more than one thousand ethnic groups, who speak more than seven hundred languages; more crucially for the worlds largest Muslim population, the country had to resolve its most controversial issue: the place of Islam in politics.* It took years and four prodemocracy constitutional amendments for a presidential system to emerge that relied on coalitions to govern. In 2004 Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became the first directly elected president and, fearful he would be impeached, insisted on ruling by coalition. Mietzner chronicles how Yudhoyonos grand coalition ushered in stability for a time, but voters had soured on him by the end of his second term.

When Jokowi won in 2014defeating Prabowothe scrawny former mayor of Solo was a weak outsider who was loved by the Reformasi and prodemocracy contingent and somewhat ambivalently backed by the party headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesias first postindependence president, the flamboyant, autocratic Sukarno, and president herself from 2001 to 2004. Jokowi faced blocked cabinet nominations, lack of support from his own party, and recurrent humiliations from Megawati and, more ominously, from Muslims who rejected his proclaimed commitment to pluralism and democratic reform. It didnt take him long to embrace what Mietzner calls coalitional presidentialism. Within a year he had meddled in the leadership of two opposition parties (which had backed Prabowo in the 2014 election) so that he controlled the majority of parties and seats in the legislature.

As Mietzners book makes clear, the crucial milestone in Jokowis road to political dominance occurred in 2016, when an alliance of conservative Muslim leaders, hard-line Islamist vigilantes, and Saudi-influenced preachers accused his close ally, the ethnically Chinese and Christian politician Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, of insulting Islam while campaigning to be elected Jakartas governor. They organized a series of rallies that were some of the largest in Indonesias history. The capital was flooded with more than 700,000 Muslims demanding that Ahok be charged with blasphemy. It was a political earthquake, and Jokowi acquiesced. Ahok was charged and given a two-year sentence. And he lost the governors election to Anies Baswedan, one of the unsuccessful presidential candidates this year.

The anti-Ahok movement transformed Jokowi and Indonesia. Jokowis Reformasi supporters, including Goenawan, were horrified, and so were some of the leaders of Indonesias gargantuan traditionalist Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which considers puritanical Saudi-influenced Islam an existential threat to its own relaxed, pluralist, local Islam. Jokowi aligned himself with both NU and his prodemocracy supporters. With their support, he eventually sidelined the Islamists behind the protests, all the while strengthening his base.

In February I met with Ulil Abshar Abdalla, now a deputy head of NU, and over lunch at Hello Sunday, a trendy spot inside a colonial-era Art Deco gem in downtown Jakarta, we discussed NUs alliance with Jokowi. It has been very good for NU, and very good for Ulil. Jokowi understood that he could take advantage of the widespread fear of Islamists, but he needed NUs backing to suppress them. For NU, the alliance meant a steady flow of state support. For Jokowi, NUs support meant a huge pool of voters, especially on Java, where more than half of Indonesias 279 million citizens live, and he handily won reelection in 2019.

Mietzner describes how Jokowi, emancipated from his party by this backing and buoyed by his popularity, began his second term with a substantially broadened and consolidated coalition. Prospects of any pro-democracy breakthroughs, however, were also much reduced. The president had become a virtuoso of coalition politics and Indonesias patronage democracy, refining the give-and-take that delivered both stability and democratic decline. He rewarded those who did his bidding and punished those who did not. The political parties, the army, the police, the bureaucrats, the Muslim organizations, and the oligarchs all needed to be part of Jokowis circle. In return, he needed to keep them happy.

NU became a state favorite once Jokowi was reelected. Yahya Cholil Staquf, a Jokowi ally, became its head, and his brother, Yaqut Cholil Quomas, became the minister of religious affairs. Ulil, Yahyas protg, was given a job promoting NUs version of Islam with a great deal of state aid. Many jobs in the ministry of religions enormous bureaucracy went to NU followers. NU also expanded a campaign to put what it calls Indonesias version of tolerant, humanitarian Islam on the global map. (NU celebrates its tolerance, but it did not extend to Communists or leftists in 1965 and 1966, when, after a failed coup, hundreds of thousands of them were killed by, among others, NUs willing executioners. And it doesnt extend to Islamists, Shias, or gay Indonesians today.) Ulil proudly pointed out that more than 50 percent of Indonesians identify themselves as aligned with NU. When Jokowi cracked down on Islamists and banned two Islamist organizations, NU leaders applauded. Jokowi knew there is a deep fear of the Islamists, and he knew NU would help him use that fear, said Ulil.

These measures were just the beginning of Jokowis use of that fear to consolidate power. His loyalists were put in charge of Indonesias vast police apparatus, which steadily marginalized and criminalized Islamist activists. Beyond the banning of organizations, people deemed pro-Islamist were removed from campuses and the state bureaucracy. Slowly this marginalization broadened to include all government critics, not just Islamists. The NGO Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network reported a drastic increase in the criminalization of online expression in 2022, with 107 people charged under Indonesias Electronic Information and Transactions law, a threefold increase from the previous year. Most were charged with defaming state officials and institutions. Much of the incremental crackdown went unnoticed, except by those seen as threats to Jokowis expanding control. He is a master of knowing his voters, and he tracks polling data to determine what is possible and what will create a backlash.

Jokowis reelection, Mietzner writes, led to two important turning points in the consolidation of his coalitional presidency. First, under pressure from political parties in his coalition, Jokowi failed to stop the wrecking of the Corruption Eradication Commission, known as the KPK, one of most important institutions established in the reform era that followed the end of Suhartos regime. The KPK has been exceedingly popular and effective in rooting out widespread political and business corruption. Scores of local and national politicians have been hauled off in front of TV cameras over the years, wearing the telltale orange vests of KPK suspects. More than five hundred politicians, businesspeople, police officers, and civil servants have been prosecuted by the KPK. And for years politicians tried to curb its extensive investigative powers but were always stopped by an outcry from civil society. Then rumors circulated on social media and political talk shows that Islamists had infiltrated the KPK. Support for it waned, and in 2019 a law was passed that destroyed the KPKs independence and left it a shell.

The second turning point was Jokowis surprising choice of Prabowo as his defense minister. Prabowo had been a rising general under Suharto and had married one of the dictators daughters. In the regimes waning days he oversaw a special forces unit, called the Rose Team, that was accused of kidnapping and torturing more than twenty activists, thirteen of whom are still missing and presumed killed. Prabowo has admitted that there were kidnappings, but he denies any involvement in the killings of anti-Suharto activists. He has also been accused of human rights abuses in East Timor during the now independent nations long, brutal occupation by Indonesia. And he was associated with a segment of the army that instigated riots in Jakarta in a failed attempt to prolong Suhartos rule during its last weeks. After Suhartos overthrow, Prabowo was vilified as a symbol of the regimes brutality. He was forced to retire early from the military and spent more than a year in exile in Jordan.

Zulkarnain/Xinhua/eyewire/Redux

President Joko Widodo voting in Indonesias general elections, Jakarta, February 14, 2024

Over the years this dark history simply faded away. Prabowo became a business tycoon and politician. He ran unsuccessfully for president twice against Jokowiin 2014 as a nationalist strongman and in 2019 as a defender of the Islamists. After his appointment as defense minister, he seized the chance to reinvent himself again. He praised Jokowi as the nations best president and went out of his way to present himself as Jokowis protg. The US, too, softened its view, granting him a visa once he became defense minister. Jokowi and Prabowos reconciliation helped them both. Mietzner writes:

Prabowos integration into the presidential coalition not only accommodated Widodos archrival and neutralized the threat of him becoming an anti-government agitator, but it also sent further signals to the military that it did not have to fear legal prosecution and could rest assured that its officers had opportunities to prosper under democratic rule.

Since Jokowis second term was consumed with the Covid-19 pandemic and his pet projectbuilding a new national capital in the jungle in the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneothe president and his advisers started hinting that he needed a third term to finish all that he had started. Megawati, the imperious head of the PDI-P, the party that had twice nominated him as its presidential candidate, refused to go along, citing the constitutional limit of two terms. Jokowi, irked by Megawatis opposition, had his advisers explore other options for retaining influence. There were several, and his strongest asset was his consistent 75 to 80 percent approval ratings, which ensured that his support would be significant to the candidate he backed in the election. For a while it seemed that Jokowis choice as successor would be Ganjar, PDI-Ps candidate, but his deteriorating relationship with Megawati helps explain why he rejected that option.

All the while Prabowo wooed Jokowi, even promising that Jokowi could select cabinet ministers if he won. By August of last year the Constitutional Court, the other hallowed reform-era institution, had before it a case challenging the clause of the constitution preventing Gibran from running for vice-president. On October 16 the court, whose chief justice was Jokowis brother-in-law, Anwar Usman, issued a ruling allowing Gibran to be on the ticket. (A few weeks later the courts ethics council removed Anwar from his post as chief justice, but he was allowed to remain on the court, and the ruling was binding.) Prabowos support went from 37 percent in October to 47 percent in December. Jokowi had, once again, correctly read his voters.

By the time I had lunch with Ulil, the Prabowo-Gibran campaign had set its sights on winning over 50 percent of the vote in the first round and avoiding a runoff. Prabowos team had successfully recast him as a cute, cuddlygemoy in Indonesiangrandpa, and TikTok was full of images of the rotund Prabowo sashaying across campaign stages, doing his signature gemoy dance. NU is supposed to be neutral in elections, but its head, Yahya Cholil Staquf, known as Gus Yahya, was clearly pushing for Prabowo. Ulil was keen to explain to me why Yahya and NU had no choice but to back him. Prabowo is the bet on the table, and Prabowo is the best bet for NU. We have to fight for what is good for NU, and that is state support. We have big plans, and it is expensive, he told me.

Im not comfortable, but I have to help Gus Yahya. He had to make a calculation, and Gus Yahya decided that only Prabowobecause of Jokowican guarantee us a partnership with the state. That is what NU needs.

I went to Jombang, a town in East Java considered the heartland of NU, to see if the mostly NU voters there agreed with Gus Yahyas and Ulils assessment. Jombang, a bustling place with no skyscrapers, is known as a kota santria city of Muslim studentsbecause of its thousands of Islamic boarding schools, or pesantren. Despite this being the hometown of Muhaimin Iskandar, the vice-presidential candidate on Anies Baswedans ticket, nearly everyone I met was voting for Prabowo. In a neighborhood of Jombang called Tambak Beras, about fifty pesantren, with some 12,000 students, are scattered along the winding lanes. Mohammad Hasib Wahab Hasbullah, the titular head of the area, invited me to sit in his garden and talk about the campaign. He sounded like Ulil as he explained why he supported Prabowo: NU must be close to the government. As students walked through the narrow streets, the girls in colorful headscarves and the boys in batik sarongs, Hasbullah said that Jokowi had done so much for NU, from creating a national Santri Day to endorsing a bill that bolstered the standing of pesantren in the national education system to adding Hasbullahs grandfather to the roster of national heroes. And now, just like Jokowi, we want Prabowo, he added.

The soft-spoken head of a pesantren close by also invited me in to talk. He told me that even though Gus Yahya had said he would be neutral, it was clear he was supporting Prabowo. In December Gus Yahya invited about two hundred pesantren leaders from Jombang to the Shangri-La hotel in Surabaya and asked them to turn out the vote for Prabowo. Then the head of the pesantren invoked what I came to think of as Ulils mantra: NU needs to be close to the government. At this point, his wife joined the conversation. This is a very bad election. This is a dynasty election. Why choose Gibran? Why him? she asked. Because that is what Jokowi wants, and Gus Yahya goes along. She said she would not be voting for Prabowo-Gibran.

Everywhere I went there were young students participating in English storytelling competitions and preaching contests. When I asked a few of them which candidates they favored, most shyly smiled and then raised two fingers, indicating Prabowo and Gibran, who had the number two spot on the ballot. Jokowis popularity was a huge reason for this support, but there was also some not-so-subtle pressure.

Ahmad Athoillah, the head of the Anies-Muhaimin team in Jombang, complained that the campaign was not fair. We were betrayed by Prabowo. There was an agreement that Prabowo would team up with Muhaimin. We worked for a long time and introduced Prabowo to many of the pesantren here, he said as we sat in the campaign offices. But Prabowo broke that promise, and now even NU is backing Prabowo. NU must say that all citizens are free to choose, but instead they are saying you must vote for Prabowo. Athoillah described pressure on village heads to get out the vote for Prabowo. He brought up the case of East Javas popular governor, Khofifah Indar Parawansa, who is also the head of NUs powerful womens arm. She had initially refrained from supporting Prabowo, but she made a big public endorsement just weeks after the KPK searched her office for evidence of alleged misappropriation of funds. This isnt fair, he repeated.

At a womens gathering one night, Muhaimins mother, Muhasonah Iskandar, led the group in prayers and recited from the Quran. She is a beloved figure in Jombang, but many of the women whispered that that wouldnt stop people from voting for Prabowo. Prabowos campaign has so much money, they said as we sat on a carpeted floor. One woman, a pesantren teacher, told me that Prabowos team gave the head of one pesantren a new car. Another was given funds for a new dormitory. Someone else was promised a trip to Mecca.

In the last days of the campaign, a long documentary called Dirty Vote was released online. By election day it had been viewed more than 13 million times. It attempted to reveal on a broad, national scale the state pressure Ahmad Athoillah had complained of in Jombang. Dirty Vote alleges that the campaign was tilted in Prabowos favor by a pattern of extensive state intervention, some legal and some illegal. Dirty Vote went viral, but it didnt alter the outcome.

The Prabowo-Gibran government will not be sworn in until October, leaving plenty of time for a new coalitional presidency to emerge. Indonesias democracy will not improve under Prabowo, but it wont necessarily get worse, either. He has no reason to blow up the diminished system he will inherit. He has all the tools he needs to silence dissent and can use state resources to consolidate power. But there are risks. Will his alliance with Jokowi last? What will Jokowi do? Would Prabowo prevail in a contest between them?

A falling-out is probably inevitable. One cause could be the budget. Construction of the new capital, Jokowis pet project, is very expensive, and Prabowo built his campaign around a promise of free lunches to all students, with a price tag of $28.8 billion over the next five years, according to the head of his campaign. Prabowos chameleon personality may change again, and his earlier disdain for democracy may reemerge. He may see the tactics used in this campaign as a precedent for intervention in future elections. Then there is the issue of his health. He is now seventy-two, and if he doesnt make it to the end of his five-year term, Jokowis son will become president. So much has changed in Indonesia, but the sense of uncertainty that plagued the nation after Suharto fell has roared back for many. Jokowis victory has come at a high cost.

March 7, 2024

Here is the original post:
Indonesia's Corrupted Democracy | Margaret Scott - The New York Review of Books

By Tim Reid

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump said on Saturday if he does not win November's presidential election it will mean the likely end of American democracy.

The Republican presidential candidate, speaking to supporters in Ohio, made the claim after repeating his baseless assertion that his 2020 election defeat to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of election fraud.

During an outdoor speech that was whipped by strong winds and punctuated by some profane language, Trump predicted that if he does not win the Nov. 5 general election, American democracy will come to an end.

"If we don't win this election, I don't think you're going to have another election in this country," Trump said.

Trump, who is under criminal indictment in Georgia for trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election there, this week won enough delegates to mathematically clinch the Republican nomination.

A general election rematch with Biden is likely to be extremely close. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week found the two candidates in a statistical tie with registered voters.

Trump opened his remarks in Dayton with a tribute to his supporters who are currently in jail for rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as they sought to block certification of Biden's 2020 election win.

Trump saluted and called them "patriots" and "hostages".

The former Republican president has been using increasingly dystopian rhetoric in his campaign speeches about the state of the country.

In the middle of a section in his speech about placing tariffs on imported cars, and foreign competition for the U.S. auto industry, Trump declared: "If I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole country."

Asked what he meant, his campaign pointed to a post on the social media platform X by a New York Times journalist, which said Trump's "bloodbath" comment came amid a discussion about the U.S. auto industry and the economy.

Asked for a response to Trump's "bloodbath" comment, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer condemned Trump's "extremism", "his thirst for revenge", and his "threats of political violence".

Trump also appealed to Blacks and Hispanics, voters who will play a key role in deciding November's election.

Trump has been narrowing the gap with Biden in opinion polls with non-white voters, who formed a core part of Biden's winning coalition when he defeated Trump in 2020.

Trump cited a central campaign theme, that too many illegal immigrants have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office, in his appeal to minority voters.

"No-one has been hurt by Joe Biden's migrant invasion more than our great African American and Hispanic communities," Trump said. He claimed without citing any evidence that illegal immigrants were taking their jobs.

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Read the rest here:
Trump predicts the end of U.S. democracy if he loses 2024 election - Yahoo! Voices

Flags representing various political parties wave along a street in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Jan. 23, 2024, a few weeks ahead of a massive general election. Candidates from 18 national parties participated. (Azwar Ipank/Anadolu via Getty Images)

This Pew Research Center analysis on views of how to improve democracy uses data from nationally representative surveys conducted in 24 countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. All responses are weighted to be representative of the adult population in each country.

For non-U.S. data, this analysis draws on nationally representative surveys of 27,285 adults conducted from Feb. 20 to May 22, 2023. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Surveys were conducted face-to-face with adults in Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland and South Africa. In Australia, we used a mixed-mode probability-based online panel. Read more about international survey methodology.

In the U.S., we surveyed 3,576 adults from March 20 to March 26, 2023. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology.

Researchers examined random samples of English responses, machine-translated non-English responses, and non-English responses translated by a professional translation firm to develop a codebook for the main topics mentioned across the 24 countries. The codebook was iteratively improved via practice coding and calculations of intercoder reliability until a final selection of 17 substantive codes was formally adopted. (For more on the codebook, refer to Appendix C.)

To apply the codebook to the full collection of open-ended responses, a team of Pew Research Center coders and professional translators were trained to code English and non-English responses. Coders in both groups coded random samples and were evaluated for consistency and accuracy. They were asked to independently code responses only after reaching an acceptable threshold for intercoder reliability. (For more on the coding methodology, refer to Appendix A.)

There is some variation in whether and how people responded to our open-ended question. In each country surveyed, some respondents said that they did not understand the question, did not know how to answer or did not want to answer. This share of adults ranged from 4% in Spain to 47% in the U.S.

In some countries, people also tended to mention fewer things that would improve democracy in their country relative to people surveyed elsewhere. For example, across the 24 countries surveyed, a median of 73% mentioned only one topic in our codebook (e.g., politicians). The share in South Korea is much higher, with 92% suggesting only one area of improvement when describing what they think would improve democracy. In comparison, about a quarter or more mention two areas of improvement in France, Spain, Sweden and the U.S.

These differences help explain why the share giving a particular answer in certain publics may appear much lower than others, even if it is the top-ranked suggestion for improving democracy. To give a specific example, 10% of respondents in Poland mention politicians, while 18% do so in South Africa yet the topic is ranked second in Poland and third in South Africa. Given this discrepancy, researchers have chosen to highlight not only the share of the public that mentions a given topic but also its relative ranking among all topics coded, both in text and in graphics.

Here is the question used for this report, along with coded responses for each country, and the survey methodology.

Open-ended responses highlighted in the text of this report were chosen to represent the key themes researchers identified. They have been edited for clarity and, in some cases, translated into English by a professional firm. Some responses have also been shortened for brevity.

Pew Research Center surveys have long found that people in many countries are dissatisfied with their democracy and want major changes to their political systems and this year is no exception. But high and growing rates of discontent certainly raise the question: What do people think could fix things?

We set out to answer this by asking more than 30,000 respondents in 24 countries an open-ended question: What do you think would help improve the way democracy in your country is working? While the second- and third-most mentioned priorities vary greatly, across most countries surveyed, there is one clear top answer: Democracy can be improved with better or different politicians.

People want politicians who are more responsive to their needs and who are more competent and honest, among other factors. People also focus on questions of descriptive representation the importance of having politicians with certain characteristics such as a specific race, religion or gender.

Respondents also think citizens can improve their own democracy. Across most of the 24 countries surveyed, issues of public participation and of different behavior from the people themselves are a top-five priority.

Other topics that come up regularly include:

We explore these topics and the others we coded in the following chapters:

You can also read peoples answers in their own words in our interactive data essay and quote sorter: How People in 24 Countries Think Democracy Can Improve. Many responses in the quote sorter and throughout this report appear in translation; for selected quotes in their original language, visit this spreadsheet.

The survey was conducted from Feb. 20 to May 22, 2023, in 24 countries and 36 different languages. Below, we highlight some key themes, drawn from the open-ended responses and the 17 rigorously coded substantive topics.

In almost every country surveyed, changes to politicians are the most commonly mentioned way to improve democracy. People broadly call for three types of improvements: better representation, increased competence and a higher level of responsiveness. They also call for politicians to be less corrupt or less influenced by special interests.

Bringing in more diverse voices, rather than mostly wealthy White men.

First, people want to see politicians from different groups in society though which groups people want represented run the gamut. In Japan, for example, one woman said democracy would improve if there were more diversity and more women parliamentarians. In Kenya, having leaders from all tribes is seen as a way to make democracy work better. People also call for younger voices and politicians from poor backgrounds, among other groups. The opposing views of two American respondents, though, highlight why satisfying everyone is difficult:

Most politicians in office right now are rich, Christian and old. Their overwhelmingly Christian views lead to laws and decisions that not only limit personal freedoms like abortion and gay marriage, but also discriminate against minority religions and their practices.

Man, 23, U.S.

We need to stop worrying about putting people in positions because of their race, ethnicity or gender. What happened to being put in a position because they are the best person for that position?

Man, 64, U.S.

Our politicians should have an education corresponding to their subject or field.

Second, people want higher-caliber politicians. This includes a desire to see more technical expertise and traits such as morality, honesty, a stronger backbone or more common sense.

Sometimes, people simply want politicians with no criminal records something mentioned explicitly by a South Korean man and echoed by respondents in the United States, India and Israel, among other places.

Make democracy promote more of the peoples voice. The peoples voice is the great strength for leadership.

Third, people want their politicians to hear them and respond to their needs and wishes, and for politicians to keep their promises. One man in the United Kingdom said, If leaders would listen more to the local communities and do their jobs as members of Parliament, that would really help democracy in this country. It seems like once theyre elected, they just play lip service to the role.

Concerns about special interests and corruption are common in certain countries, including Mexico, the U.S. and Australia. One Mexican woman said, Politicians should listen more to the Mexican people, not buy people off using money or groceries. Others complained about politicians pillaging the country and enriching themselves by keeping tax money.

For some, the political system itself needs to change in order for democracy to work better. Changing the governmental structure is one of the top five topics coded in most countries surveyed and its tied for the most mentioned issue in the U.S., along with politicians. These reforms include adjusting the balance of power between institutions, implementing term limits, and more.

Some also see the need to reform the electoral system in their country; others want more direct democracy through referenda or public forums. Judicial system reform is a priority for some, especially in Israel. (In Israel, the survey was conducted amid large-scale protests against a proposed law that would limit the power of the Supreme Court, but prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the courts rejection of the law in January.)

The U.S. stands out as the only country surveyed where reforming the government is the top concern (tied with politicians). Americans mention very specific proposals such as giving the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico statehood, increasing the size of the House of the Representatives to allow one representative per 100,000 people, requiring a supermajority for all spending bills, eliminating the filibuster, and more.

Term limits for elected officials are a particularly popular reform in the U.S. Americans call for them to prevent career politicians, as in the case of one woman who said, I think we need to limit the number of years politicians can serve. No one should be able to serve as a politician for 40+ years like Joe Biden. I dont have anything against him. I just think that we need limits. We have too many people who have served for too long and have little or nothing to show for it. Term limits for Supreme Court justices are also top of mind for many Americans when it comes to judicial system reform.

There are many parts of the UK where its obvious who will get elected. My vote doesnt count where I live because the Conservative Party wins every time. Effectively it means that the majority is not represented by the government. With proportional representation, everybodys vote would count.

The electoral system is among the top targets for change in some countries. In Canada, Nigeria and the UK, changing how elections work is the second-most mentioned topic of the 17 substantive codes and it falls in the top five in Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and the U.S.

Suggested changes vary across countries and include switching from first-past-the-post to a proportional voting system, having a fixed date for elections, lowering the voting age, returning to hand-counted paper ballots, voting directly for candidates rather than parties, and more.

Calls for direct democracy are prevalent in several European countries even ranking second in France and Germany. One French woman said, There should be more referenda, they should ask the opinion of the people more, and it should be respected.

In the broadest sense, people want a direct voting system or for people to have the vote, not middlemen elected officials. More narrowly, they also mention specific topics they would like referenda for, including rejoining the European Union in the UK; abortion, retirement and euthanasia in France; all legislation which harms the justice system in Israel; asylum policy, nitrogen policy and local affairs in the Netherlands; when and where the country goes to war in Australia; gay marriage, marijuana legalization and bail reform in the U.S.; nuclear power, sexuality, NATO and the EU in Sweden; and who should be prime minister in Japan. (The survey was conducted prior to Sweden joining NATO in March 2024.)

Of the systemic reforms suggested, few bring up changes to the judicial system in most countries. Only in Israel, where the topic ranked first at the time of the survey, does judicial system reform appear in the top 10 coded issues. Israelis approach this issue from vastly different perspectives. For instance, some want to curtail the Supreme Courts influence over government decisions, while others want to preserve its independence, as in these two examples:

Finish the legislation that will limit the enormous and generally unreasonable power of the Supreme Court in Israel!

Man, 64, Israel

Do everything to keep the last word of the High Court on any social and moral issue.

Man, 31, Israel

Notably, some respondents propose the exact reform that those in another country would like to do away with.

For example, while some people in countries without mandatory voting think it could be useful to implement, there are respondents in Australia where voting is compulsory who want it to end. People without mandatory voting see it as a way to force everyone to have a say: We have to get everyone out to vote. Everyone complains. Voting should be mandatory. Everyone has to vote and have a say, said a Canadian woman. But the flip side one Australian expressed was, Eliminate compulsory voting. The votes of people who do not care about a result voids the vote of somebody who does.

The ideal number of parties in government is another topic that brings about opposing suggestions. In the Netherlands, which has a relatively large number of parties, altering the party system is the second-most mentioned way to improve democracy. Dutch respondents differed on terms of the maximum number of parties they want to see (a three-party system, four or five parties at most, a maximum of seven parties, etc.) but the tenor is broadly similar: Too many parties is leading to fragmentation, polarization and division. Elsewhere, however, some squarely attribute polarization to a system with too few parties. In the U.S., a man noted, The most egregious problem is that a two-party system cannot ever hope to be representative of its people as the will of any group cannot be captured in a binary system: The result will be increased polarization between the Democratic and Republican parties.

Even in countries with more than two parties, like Canada and the UK, there can be a sense that only two are viable. A Canadian man said, We need to have a free election with more than two parties.

Citizens both their quality and their participation in politics come up regularly as an area that requires improvement for democracy to work better. In most countries, the issue is in the top five. And in Israel, Sweden, Italy and Japan, citizens are the second-most mentioned topic of the 17 coded. (In this analysis, citizens refers to all inhabitants of each country, not just the legal residents.)

In general, respondents see three ways citizens can improve: being more informed, participating more and generally being better people.

More awareness and more information. We have highly separated classes. There are generations who have never read a newspaper. One cannot be fully democratic if one is not aware.

First, citizens being more informed is seen as crucial. Respondents argue that informed citizens are able to vote more responsibly and avoid being misled by surface-level political quips or misinformation.

In the Netherlands, for example, where the survey predated the electoral success of Geert Wilders right-wing populist Party for Freedom (PVV), one woman noted that citizens need education, and openness, maybe. There are a lot of people who vote Geert Wilders because of his one-liners, and they dont think beyond those. They havent learned to think beyond whats right in front of them. (For more information on how we classify populist parties, refer to Appendix E.)

Each and every one of us must go to the polls and make our own decisions.

Second, some respondents want people in their country to be more involved in politics whether that be turning out to vote, protesting at key moments or just caring more about politics or other issues. They hold the notion that if people participate, they will be less apathetic and less likely to complain, and their voices will be represented more fully. One woman in Sweden noted, I would like to see more involvement from different groups of people: younger people, people with different backgrounds, people from minority groups.

People should walk around rationally, respecting each other, dialoguing and respecting peoples cultures.

Third, the character of citizens comes up regularly respondents requests for their countrymen range from care more about others to love God and neighbor completely to asking that they be better critical thinkers, among myriad other things. Still, some calls for improved citizen behavior contradict each other, as in the case of two Australian women who differ over how citizens should think about assimilation:

We need to be more caring and thoughtful about people who come to the country. We need to be more tolerant and absorb them in our community.

Woman, 75, Australia

We need to stop worrying that we are going to offend other nationalities and their traditions. We should be able to say Merry Christmas instead of happy holidays, and Christmas celebrations should be held in schools without worrying about offending others in our so-called democratic society.

Woman, 70, Australia

One challenge is that people in the same country may offer the exact opposite solutions. For example, in the UK, some people want politicians to make more money; others, less. In the U.S., while changes to the electoral system rank as one of the publics top solutions for fixing democracy, some want to make it significantly easier to vote by methods like automatically registering citizens or making it easier to vote by mail. Others want to end these practices or even eliminate touch-screen voting machines.

People in several countries, mostly in the middle-income nations surveyed (Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa) stand out for the emphasis they place on economic reform as a means to improve democracy. In India and South Africa, for example, the issue ranks first among the 17 substantive topics coded; in Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya, it ranks second. These calls include a focus on creating jobs, curbing inflation, changing government spending priorities and more.

When education, roads, hospitals and adequate water are made available, then I can say democracy will improve.

Sometimes, people draw a causal link between the economy and democracy, suggesting that improvements to the former would improve the latter. For example, one woman in Indonesia said, Improve the economic conditions to ensure democracy goes well. People also insinuated that having basic needs met is a precursor to their democracy functioning. One South African man noted that democracy in his country would work better if the government created more employment for the youth, fixed the roads and gave us water. They must also fix the electricity problem. A man in India said, Theres a need for development in democracy.

Indeed, specific policies and legislation particularly improvements to infrastructure like roads, hospitals, water, electricity and schools are the second-most mentioned topic in Brazil, India, Nigeria and South Africa. Some respondents offer laundry lists of policies that need attention, such as one Brazilian woman who called for improving health care, controlling drug use, more security for the population, and improving the situation of people on the streets.

Beyond economic reform, other changes to living conditions also receive more emphasis in some middle-income countries surveyed:

Democracy is fine because you have the freedom to express yourself without being persecuted, especially in politics.

People sometimes say there are no changes that can make democracy in their country work better. These responses include broadly positive views of the status quo such as, I am very happy to live in a country with democracy. An Indian man responded simply, Everything is going well in India. Some respondents even compare their system favorably to others, as one Australian man said: I think it currently works pretty well, far better than, say, the U.S. or UK, Poland or Israel.

Our current system is broken and Im not sure what, if anything, can fix it at this point.

But some are more pessimistic. They have the sense that no matter what I do, nothing will change. A Brazilian man said, It is difficult to make it better. Brazil is too complicated.

And some see no better options. In Hungary where no changes was the second-most cited topic of the 17 coded one man referenced Winston Churchills quote about democracy, saying, Democracy is the worst form of government, not counting all the others that man has tried from time to time.

In many countries, a sizable share offer no response at all saying that they do not know or refusing to answer. This includes around a third or more of those in Indonesia, Japan and the U.S. In most countries, those who did not answer the question tended to have lower levels of formal education than those who offered a substantive solution. And in some places including the U.S. they were also more likely to be women than men.

Despite considerable discontent with democracy, few people suggest changing to a non-democratic system. Those who do call for a new system offer options like a military junta, a theocracy or an autocracy as possible new systems.

Related: Who likes authoritarianism, and how do they want to change their government?

One other way to think about what people believe will help improve their democracy is to focus on three themes: basic needs that can be addressed, improvements to the system and complete overhauls of the system. We explore these themes in our interactive data essay and quote sorter: How People in 24 Countries Think Democracy Can Improve.

You can also explore peoples responses in their own words, with the option to filter by country and code by navigating over to the quote sorter.

In the chapters that follow, we discuss 15 of our coded themes in detail. We analyze how people spoke about them, as well as how responses varied across and within countries. We chose to emphasize the relative frequency, or rank order, in which people mentioned these different topics. For more about this choice, as well as details about our coding procedure and methodology, refer to Appendix A.

Explore the chapters of this report:

There is some variation in whether and how people responded to our open-ended question. In each country surveyed, some respondents said that they did not understand the question, did not know how to answer or did not want to answer. This share of adults ranged from 4% in Spain to 47% in the U.S.

In some countries, people also tended to mention fewer things that would improve democracy in their country relative to people surveyed elsewhere. For example, across the 24 countries surveyed, a median of 73% mentioned only one topic in our codebook (e.g., politicians). The share in South Korea is much higher, with 92% suggesting only one area of improvement when describing what they think would improve democracy. In comparison, about a quarter or more mention two areas of improvement in France, Spain, Sweden and the U.S.

These differences help explain why the share giving a particular answer in certain publics may appear much lower than others, even if the topic is the top mentioned suggestion for improving democracy. To give a specific example, 10% in Poland mention politicians while 18% say the same in South Africa, but the topic is ranked second in Poland and third in South Africa. Given this, researchers have chosen to highlight not only the share of the public who mention a given topic but also its relative ranking among the topics coded, both in the text and in graphics.

More:
What People Think Would Improve Democracy in 24 Countries - Pew Research Center

A group of Harvard social scientists launched a four-part series last week previewing the high-stakes 2024 general election in India, expected to draw a record turnout in the worlds most populous nation, where more than 986 million are registered to vote.

The balloting will decide the political makeup of Lok Sabha, Indias lower house of Parliament. It will also determine whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a hard-line Hindu nationalist, will remain in power for a third term. The India Votes series kicked off with a conversation interrogating the very nature of democracy in the vast, multi-ethnic society, with Modis leadership proving a central theme.

Today India faces challenges that will be familiar to anyone in the Harvard community, noted series co-organizer Maya Jasanoff 96, the X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor and Coolidge Professor of History. The rise of right-wing populism has been a subject of global significance, she said. Concerns about media coverage of political campaigns are highly pertinent. . And Indias international presence has been shaped by an increasingly large diaspora population, particularly here in the United States.

Hindus make up the largest religious group in the nation at about 80 percent. The political, economic, and social persecution of Indias religious minorities figured prominently in the conversation, sponsored by multiple academic departments and global centers, including the Harvard University Asia Center, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Also central was what moderator Sugata Bose, the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, called Indias fascinating case study of the struggle to establish democratic norms after freeing itself from the authoritarianism of British colonial rule in 1947.

The expert on modern South Asia and Indian Ocean history opened the discussion with a chronicle of his own service in the Lok Sabha, or House of the People, between 2014 and 2019, just as Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.) swept to national power.

In my very first speech, I tried to issue a warning not to confuse majoritarianism with democracy and uniformity with unity, having noted that the House of the People did not reflect the rich diversity of India as well as it should, recalled Bose, whose latest book is the just released Asia After Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century.

As the evenings three panelists took turns giving prepared remarks, Sandipto Dasgupta, an assistant professor of politics at the New School, suggested the persistent focus on the size of Indias democracy distracts from more qualitative assessments of political leaders like Modi, the clear favorite according to recent polling.

What we get is this idea of elections sans any kind of modernization, sans any kind of new politics elections as just an exercise in adding large numbers, said Dasgupta, whose Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony is available this month. We get this peculiar idea of a deeply undemocratic set of politicians who believe in elections very, very much.

Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research think tank, underscored this point, noting that North Korea is one of the more than 60 countries with elections in 2024.

The political scientist, veteran journalist, and former Indian military officer also testified to the diminished state of Indias political press, which he accused of failing in its role as a pillar of democracy.

When Trump won [in the U.S.], Margaret Sullivan at The New York Times wrote that journalists are going to have to be better, stronger, more courageous, Singh said. In India, the journey has been in the opposite direction after Modi won in May 2014. Media have become a cruel propaganda arm of the government and ruling party.

Raheel Dhattiwala,an independent sociologist who is currently a fellow with the University of Heidelberg, spoke to the use of violence for winning elections. She cited the anti-Muslim riots that occurred in Gujarat in 2002, when Modi was the Indian states chief minister and widely perceived to have supported the attacks.

The greatest violence was in places where the B.J.P. faced the greatest electoral competition not where it was strong or weak, said the former journalist, who published Keeping the Peace:Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 five years ago.

Mob violence like that is hardly necessary today, Dhattiwala argued. You no longer need to feel any shame in expressing hatred for a minority group, she said.

Some in the audience pushed back on these analyses during the question-and-answer session. One attendee challenged the panelists to list a positive accomplishment of the Indian government over the last 10 years. Another requested something anything to end on a hopeful note.

As I sit here, Im a little struck by what to me feels like the narrowness of the case you make, said Mittal Institute Executive Director Hitesh Hathi, M.A. 97, one of the last in the audience to speak.

He listed examples of political violence and abuse of state power occurring in Indian states controlled by parties other than the B.J.P. So there is a larger political problem, Hathi said. If we only focus on one party and one system and one man, it feels to me like we are perhaps missing the problem and a possible solution, which I would argue comes from the deep roots of democracy in South Asian soil.

India Votes continues on March 25 with associate professor of history Arunabh Ghosh scheduled to preside over a virtual conversation featuring perspectives from Indias neighbors. Social studies lecturer Vatsal Naresh will lead an April 8 panel of journalists who have reported on Indian politics nationally and internationally. Jasanoff will close out the series on April 16 with a focus on South Asians in the U.S.

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Dark concerns over upcoming vote in world's largest democracy Harvard Gazette - Harvard Gazette