For the new year, you might have resolved to give up booze or bonbons. Maybe you should join me in giving up elections instead. Or, at the very least, in giving up the habit of investing money, time, and hope that elections might improve our communities and our world.
Democracy and elections, often used as synonyms, are two very different things. That was the central lesson of 2024, the biggest election year in history. More than half of humanity, 4 billion of us, lived in the more than 70 countries that held elections in 2024. Hopes were high that 2024 would produce greater democracy and positive change. Instead, the Year of Elections boosted autocracies, inspired violence, hamstrung governments, frustrated publics and ultimately damaged democracy.
"Our obsession with elections is killing democracy," wrote Josh Lerner, co-executive director of People Powered, in Boston Review. "We pour billions of dollars into elections, but… most people don't believe that elections are delivering actual democracy -- government by and for the people -- and they're right."
In many countries, 2024 elections were merely tools of oppression. Freedom House found that 22 contests in which incumbents attempted to jail or disqualify opponents and 16 elections in which "voters had no real choices at the ballot box" because of manipulation. Violence was a major factor in 26 of the 62 elections that Freedom House monitored.
Assassination campaigns targeted candidates for local office in Mexico and in South Africa. India's elections occasioned a wave of ethnic violence. France saw more than 50 documented assaults against candidates and activists. A South Korean opposition leader was stabbed; Donald Trump faced two assassination attempts.
Election losers have long protested results, but 2024 saw the rise of the "sore winner". In Georgia, the ruling party sought to use its parliamentary victory to make the opposition unconstitutional. Mr Trump continued threatening political opponents with prison even after winning. In Mexico, the ruling party used its re-election victory to end the independence of the judiciary.
To be fair, some democratic optimists claimed to see good news in 2024. Incumbent parties lost power throughout the world, notably in India, South Africa and Japan. Senegal and Botswana saw peaceful transfers of power. But too often, power shifts produced strife rather than optimism. South Korea's attempted coup in December was the culmination of political warring with an opposition party that won Congress in April elections.
This ugly year ought to teach us all a hard lesson: Elections are poisonous to democracy. "Elections are fundamentally disempowering," says Leonora Camner, executive director of Democracy Without Elections. "They're about dividing people with slogans and stoking fears."
She suggests that the logical response is to refocus on building democratic processes that empower people to govern themselves. But there are few signs of a shift. Why? Because powerful people and interests control elections. Their money determines who gets to be a candidate and which parties win.
In the US, the post-election conversation has been infuriating. The Democratic Party, which had claimed to be committed to democracy, now offers little opposition, all but surrendering to the anti-constitutional, anti-democratic plans of an authoritarian new administration. Leading liberals, who should be embracing democratic reforms, are instead obsessing about keeping donors on board for the 2026 midterm elections.
What should we do beyond elections? In a must-read post-election piece, Matt Leighninger, democratic innovation director for the National Civic League, suggested 10 changes to empower people to make more government decisions themselves.
These included greater use of citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, digital democratic tools, and direct democracy. Mr Leighninger also called for rebuilding local democracy by rewriting city charters, making public meetings more civil and productive, boosting neighbourhood groups and civic associations and better measuring the effectiveness of democratic self-government.
Congress could even help -- by enacting the bipartisan Building Civic Bridges Act to boost democratic infrastructure.
"The limited, frustrating and expensive version of democracy we have today, where parties tout voting as the main way for Americans to participate in governance,... doesn't make people feel like they have a voice, or that they matter," Mr Leighninger wrote.
If the Year of Elections is to have a saving grace, it will have to sap us of our devotion to elections -- so that we might pursue democracy instead. ©Zocalo Public Square
Joe Mathews is a columnist for Zocalo Public Square and founder-columnist for the planetary publication Democracy Local.