This post by Larry Garber and Avery Davis-Roberts originally appeared in The Fulcrum. Garber is an international elections expert and a member of the Carter Center‘s U.S. election expert team. Davis-Roberts is an associate director in the center’s Democracy Program. Proposed election law changes in Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere have again brought to the forefront…
This post by Larry Garber originally appeared on The Hill. The ghost of 2006 hangs heavy over the heads of United States policymakers anticipating Palestinian elections scheduled for May 22. Hamas’s surprise victory over a divided Fatah in 2006 upended the plans of those within the Bush administration who had advocated for allowing the elections to proceed, notwithstanding the participation…
This post by Kevin Johnson, Miles Rapoport, and Larry Diamond originally appeared on The Hill. Two secretaries of state were honored recently by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s Democratic secretary of state, and Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana’s Republican secretary of state, received the organization’s prestigious Patriot Award on behalf of all U.S election…
This post by Kevin Johnson and Larry Garber originally appeared in The Fulcrum. Garber and Johnson advise The Carter Center, the global human rights and democracy foundation based in Atlanta, and helped create the Election Reformers Network, international election specialists who promote voting improvements in the United States. They are among the authors of the group’s September report,…
This post originally appeared in GOVERNING. Disregard for the judgments of courts is a sure sign that democracy is in trouble. Donald Trump’s machinations after the Nov. 3 election centered, fundamentally, on overturning the many court rulings rejecting his claims of fraud. Channeling fomented partisan anger, Trump and his allies sought to replace the verdict…
This post originally appeared on the Foreign Policy website. Violent conflict over contested elections has plagued authoritarian and undemocratic countries around the world, as well as democracies that are troubled and threatened. On Wednesday, the United States became the newest member of this unfortunate club. Based on my experience working on election observation and democracy promotion…
This post originally appeared in GOVERNING. With new threats of ‘faithless legislatures’ ignoring the popular vote, reform is more urgent than ever. Allocating electoral votes proportionately would avoid election disasters and could have bipartisan appeal. — Happily, there was no drama when the nation’s presidential electors met on Monday to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Thanks in…
This post originally appeared in Attorney at Law Magazine. Despite many Cassandra-like warnings of nightmare scenarios, the 2020 elections were an institutional success. Deserving credit are voters who participated in large numbers, election officials who adapted to the realities of conducting an election during a pandemic, and judges who balanced vague and sometimes conflicting constitutional…
This blog post originally appeared on The Fulcrum’s Election Dissection. One of the most talked-about questions of this incredibly fraught election has been whether President Trump will concede if defeated by Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has fueled this concern through unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud, remarkably irresponsible statements that probably rank among the most…
This post originally appeared on foreignpolicy.com. With an incumbent president attacking the electoral process as rigged and refusing to commit to accepting the results, the Nov. 3 U.S. elections increasingly resemble those in struggling democracies and autocratic countries. I speak from experience, having led or managed some 40 election observation efforts in 22 countries over…
