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The year 2024 has been a good year for elections worldwide. Whether it has also been a good year for democracy and freedom is not so obvious. By December, more than four billion people in 50 countries – from India to the United States, Africa, Britain, across Europe and elsewhere – will have had the opportunity to vote, with the possibility (sometimes illusory) that voting allows them to select the people who govern them, and the freedom (sometimes dangerous) to speak truth to power. But there’s a problem. Some powerful leaders use the words “democratic election” not merely to hide their dictatorial tendencies but publicly to validate and strengthen them.
Vladimir Putin, for example. He pulled off a shock victory in the Russian presidential election in March – the shock being that he settled for only 88% of the vote. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame showed the way in July. The BBC reported that Kagame had “smashed his own record” by winning the 2024 Rwandan elections with “more than 99% of the vote”. He built on his 95% in 2003, 93% in 2010, and a much deserved 98.63% in 2017. By 2030 the trend points towards at least 104% of Rwandan voters choosing Kagame.
Beyond the obvious conclusion that freedom to vote does not make a democracy, more interesting is the fact that some leaders feel the need to pretend. Perhaps – in that harsh American phrase – voting can be political cosplay in which Kagame and Putin feel the need to “put lipstick on a pig”. In Iran most voters refused to play the game. Only 40% turned out in July’s presidential election. The Iranian majority chose not to validate clerically “approved” candidates, probably because the spectrum of choice ranged from regime-compliant to regime-fanatical. In Moldova, meanwhile, October’s knife-edge referendum on closer relations with the European Union passed with a tiny majority. Moldova’s prime minister noted a cyber-attack and significant election interference in favour of a “NO” vote coming from those well-known rigged election experts in Russia.
Britain and the United States, in different ways, lecture other nations on democracy and freedom. Unfortunately, both the US and UK electoral systems have been shown to be increasingly sclerotic, out of date and often plain weird. Britain claims to be the Mother of Parliaments, but the Mother doesn’t have many grateful children these days. As we all know, in July the UK Labour party won two thirds of Westminster parliamentary seats on just a third of the vote. Forty per cent of eligible British voters chose not to vote at all. It’s not quite Iranian apathy, but getting there. If Apathy were a UK political party, they’d be in number 10 now.
Unfortunately, both the US and UK electoral systems have been shown to be increasingly sclerotic, out of date and often plain weird
Meanwhile, American democracy pretends to be Ronald Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill” in which people sing “I’m proud to be an American / Where at least I know I’m free.” The gloss on the Shining City these days has been significantly dulled following extraordinary collisions between politics, freedom, violence, lies and democracy. The constitutional freedom to bear arms enabled a young man in possession of a military grade assault rifle to try to blow Donald Trump’s head off at a Pennsylvania election rally. The constitutional freedom of speech allows Elon Musk’s Twitter, now renamed X, to become a Trump propaganda tool that has turned into an online cesspit of far-right headbangers. Somewhat confusingly, before the election they were promising to defend American democracy by violently overthrowing it if they didn’t like the results.
Back in Britain, an old friend – a (losing) candidate in the British general election – tells me that rival candidates in his constituency became so concerned about politically-inspired violence that they agreed to debate “vigorously but very politely”. That’s welcome. Last summer’s riots and the politically inspired murders in recent years of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess have cast a long shadow over British public life. So, unfortunately, does the normalisation of lying. One of the watchdogs of British democracy sounded the alarm just before the July election: “The Electoral Commission is calling on all campaigners participating in the election not to mislead voters… Our research tells us that most voters see political mis- and dis-information as a problem – 70% said so in our recent survey.”
That 70% statistic surprised me. Do we really believe that almost a third – 30% – of British voters do NOT see political lying as a problem? Really? Of course, the phenomenon of leaders who lie is not new. In The Republic Plato wrote: “If anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.”
Donald Trump, one suspects, would come up short on Plato scholarship, but he certainly understands the point. When “ruler” of the United States he endorsed heartily the “privilege of lying” with his “alternative facts”. According to the Washington Post, from January 2017 to January 2021 Trump made 30,000 mis-statements, uncorrected falsehoods or downright lies. But in the 2024 campaign no one seemed to care much any more. Trump lying was old news, having become not just expected but – frankly – boring, although there were exceptions. CNN counted his falsehoods on just one day in the swing state of Pennsylvania: “We went through the speeches Trump made at his two Wednesday campaign rallies … one in Scranton and one in Reading. In those two addresses alone, he uttered at least 40 separate false claims.”
But 40 lies in two speeches is hardly news when Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency began and ended with Olympic-standard falsehoods. The first lie was about his inauguration, which Trump claimed was well attended, though TV viewers could see the opposite. Trump ended his presidency with a more dangerous claim, that he had won a second term. “Stop the Steal” was the slogan. The Capitol Hill riots followed. In his 2024 campaign this year Trump endlessly repeated those evidence-free claims that the 2020 election was “stolen”. And now he faces serious and unresolved criminal charges that he – not Joe Biden – was the one doing the stealing. Fani Willis, the Georgia district attorney, is pursuing charges that on 2 January, 2021, President Donald J Trump demanded that the (Republican) Secretary of State for Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, should “find” 11,000 or so votes to enable Trump to “win” Georgia and therefore the presidency. Raffensperger declined. Trump lost Georgia by 11,800 votes. Fortunately, the Trump-Raffensperger “find some votes” conversation was recorded for posterity, or evidence. It’s available if you Google it.
The Washington-based Freedom House – founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and others in 1941 to fight against fascism – paints a gloomy picture:
“Global freedom declined for the eighteenth consecutive year in 2023. The scope and scale of deterioration were extensive, affecting one-fifth of the world’s population. Almost everywhere, the downturn in rights was driven by attacks on pluralism – the peaceful coexistence of people with different political ideas, religions, or ethnic identities – that harmed elections and sowed violence.” The breadth and depth of the deterioration were extensive. Political rights and civil liberties were diminished in 52 countries, while only 21 countries made improvements.
Freedom and democracy of course include the freedom to vote but also the freedom to refuse. A truly free vote has to be based on reliable information and not lies, propaganda and scaremongering. The world in 2024 celebrates the capacity to hold elections. But we cannot truly celebrate the triumph of democracy. We are in a democratic recession, something potentially as severe as that which prevailed in Europe in the 1930s. Democratic freedoms in 2024 are fragile. Democratic institutions have not looked so vulnerable since the mid-twentieth-century struggle against fascism and communism. Perhaps the best insight comes from Bette Midler who recently quipped, “We used to wonder how the German people could let one angry little man lead them to ruin. Now we know.”
Gavin Esler is a broadcaster and author, most recently of “Britain Is Better Than This”
