In 2005, in the midst of a career of traveling around the world to help set up elections in some of the most challenging places on earth – Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Lebanon, South Africa, Sudan and Yemen, among others – my Danish colleague, Jorgen Elklit, and I designed the first comprehensive method for evaluating the quality of elections around the world. Our system measured 50 moving parts of an election process and covered everything from the legal framework to the polling day and counting of ballots.
In 2012 Elklit and I worked with Pippa Norris of Harvard University, who used the system as the cornerstone of the Electoral Integrity Project. Since then the EIP has measured 213 elections in 153 countries and is widely agreed to be the most accurate method for evaluating how free and fair and democratic elections are across time and place.
When we evolved the project I could never imagine that as we enter 2017, my state, North Carolina, would perform so badly on this, and other, measures that we are no longer considered to be a fully functioning democracy.
In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly free democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.
Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela. When it comes to the integrity of the voting district boundaries no country has ever received as low a score as the 7/100 North Carolina received. North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project.
That North Carolina can no longer call its elections democratic is shocking enough, but our democratic decline goes beyond what happens at election time. The most respected measures of democracy — Freedom House, POLITY and the Varieties of Democracy project — all assess the degree to which the exercise of power depends on the will of the people: That is, governance is not arbitrary, it follows established rules and is based on popular legitimacy.
The extent to which North Carolina now breaches these principles means our state government can no longer be classified as a full democracy.
First, legislative power does not depend on the votes of the people. One party wins just half the votes but 100 percent of the power. The GOP has a huge legislative majority giving it absolute veto-proof control with that tiny advantage in the popular vote. The other party wins just a handful of votes less and 0 percent of the legislative power. This is above and beyond the way in which state legislators are detached from democratic accountability as a result of the rigged district boundaries. They are beholden to their party bosses, not the voters. Seventy-six of the 170 (45 percent) incumbent state legislators were not even opposed by the other party in the general election.
Second, democracies do not limit their citizens’ rights on the basis of their born identities. However, this is exactly what the North Carolina legislature did through House Bill 2 (there are an estimated 38,000 transgender Tar Heels), targeted attempts to reduce African-American and Latino access to the vote and pernicious laws to constrain the ability of women to act as autonomous citizens.
Third, government in North Carolina has become arbitrary and detached from popular will. When, in response to losing the governorship, one party uses its legislative dominance to take away significant executive power, it is a direct attack upon the separation of powers that defines American democracy. When a wounded legislative leadership, and a lame-duck executive, force through draconian changes with no time for robust review and debate it leaves Carolina no better than the authoritarian regimes we look down upon.
What is to be done? How do we reverse the slide and become a democracy once again? Many of the issues that face us are national questions, but there are flaws in our government that can be corrected at the state level.
The first step to recovery is self-awareness. We need to put aside the complacent hyperbole and accept that in North Carolina we no longer live in a functioning democracy worth its name. We have become one of those struggling developing world states that needs to claw its way slowly toward democratic integrity.
Practically we need to address the institutional failures which have cost us our democratic ranking – districting, equal access to the vote and the abuse of legislative power. An independent commission is the sine-qua-non of democratic districting (no democracy in the world outside of the U.S. allows the elected politicians to draw the lines). Voter registration and poll access should make voting as easy as possible and never be skewed in favor of any one section of society. Last, elected officials need to respect the core principles of democracy – respect the will of the voters, all the voters and play the game with integrity.
Respect for democracy is not a partisan issue. In America true Republicans are as loyal to democratic principles as are Democrats
Andrew Reynolds has consulted in over 25 nations on issues of democratic design since 1991. His most recent book is The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford). He is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
MORE COVERAGE OF THE SPECIAL SESSION AND ITS AFTERMATH
I can’t tell you how many people I’ve told “This is like the beginning of the V for Vendetta world.” Cause it is.
Fun fact: The woman that wrote the note to V in the cell, that Eeve read, was born in 1985. I was too.
“I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like “collateral” and “rendition” became frightening. When things like norsefire and the articles of allegiance became powerful. I remember how different became dangerous.
I still don’t understand it: why they hate us so much.
They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I’ve never cried so hard in my life. It wasn’t long until they came for me.
It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place.
But for three years I had roses – and apologised to no-one.
I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch.
But one.
An inch.
It is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.
I hope that – whoever you are – you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things get better.
But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may not meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you: I love you.
okay, first of all i’m terrible sorry for all of you who live there
and also this part is terrible important, for all of those who are in the wrong side of history
“There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. Even now, orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way.
Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and, for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.
And the truth is there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object to think and speak as you saw fit you now have censors and surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting submission.
How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Certainly there are those who are more responsible than others. And they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you. And in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than 400 years ago, a great citizen wished to imbed the 5th of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words.
Trump and his top aides have a plan to keep Republicans in Congress in line: A band of conservative internet trolls stoked by Breitbart News.
In the 2016 election, Breitbart’s ability to stoke the far right and morph it into a vulgar, hate-spewing internet mob in order to browbeat Republicans into supporting Trump became a powerful political weapon.
And that’s poised to continue with Bannon by Trump’s side in the White House.
“We met with probably, on the low boundary, 30 members of Congress,” Rick Wilson, an anti-Trump Republican consultant, told Mic in an interview.
“And over and over and over again they said things like, ‘Well, I hate Trump, he’s an asshole, he’s a dang liberal, but if I say anything, Breitbart’s going to send his people after me and they’re going to threaten my staff and threaten me and I’ll have nothing but Sean Hannity kicking the shit out of me.’” Read more
If these Republicans in Congress can’t stand up to Trump, if they can’t handle a bunch of shitty Internet trolls, then they aren’t worthy of their office.
They took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Their oath of office doesn’t include a clause that says, “unless a bunch of deplorables yell at you on the Internet.”
Respect your fucking office and your goddamn responsibility to the country, you fucking cowards.
So the Smithsonian posted this an hour ago. Just because.
The Smithsonian is pulling no punches.
“But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a “nonsensical” screecher of “wild words” whose appearance, according to Newsweek, “suggests Charlie Chaplin.” His “countenance is a caricature.” He was as “voluble” as he was “insecure,” stated Cosmopolitan.
When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and quack remedies,” claimed The Washington Post.
Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober” politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to The New York Times and Christian Science Monitor. A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” would be exposed.
In fact, The New York Times wrote after Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship that success would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility.” Journalists wondered whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility.”
We are literally. Repeating history.
WE ARE ACTUALLY REPEATING HISTORY. The parallels are terrifying and they are very, very real.
Read “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson. It’s a good 101-course in this complete and total clusterfuck.
Radical librarian Jason Griffey (previously) wants librarians to continue their 21st century leadership in the resistance to surveillance and persecution – a proud record that includes the most effective stands against GW Bush’s Patriot Act – by pledging to make libraries safe havens from trumpism and its evils: electronic surveillance; racial and gender-based discrimination; and the assertion that ideology trumps empirical reality.
Neutrality favors the powerful, and further marginalizes the marginalized. In the face of the current political climate, with the use of opinions as bludgeons and disinformation as the weapon of choice for manipulation and intellectual coercion, it is up to those who value fact and believe in the care of those in need to stand up and positively affirm that to do otherwise is evil.
For libraries and librarians, that means:
1. Making the physical space of the library safe for those that need it by publicly stating your stance on the targeting of marginalized communities and then following up with actions and policies that back up those statements
2. Protecting your patrons from targeting and oppression, even in the face of possible governmental pressures, by resisting calls for information about your patrons at every level
3. Making your digital spaces safe for you patrons by limiting the data you collect, eliminating the data that you store, encrypting your communications at all levels and importantly insisting that your vendors do the same
4. Running programs that actively provide support for your at-risk patrons, whatever that looks like in your community
5. By being the voice of reason and compassion when dealing with your city or county government, and by modeling the same by advocating for those at risk
These things are vital and necessary. Especially now.
Meg's Mumbles 