The Rights of the Many v. The Rights of the Few

Hi everybody!

Bit of a shorter update on the work front for you this week because of the holiday, but I wanted to share some exciting stuff going on over here at IFES (which is pretty much everything if you can’t tell by now, but bear with me)!

After the excitement of the World Bank forum last week, my efforts this week returned to the famous Election Judgments website and keeping up our searches for new and exciting cases that the Center would like to add or write a case analysis paper on. While we’ve been sifting through a few topics for a paper, my supervisor Jordan and I have been finalizing a pretty interesting group of cases for final publication. They include everything from widespread allegations of fraud and voter interference in Malawi and Kenya, a recent U.S. Supreme Court case, and an assortment of judgments from nations in the Pacific ranging from the right to stand for election to how seriously one’s complaint of election fraud needs to be taken by a court. No shortage of exciting things to delve into.

While we’re narrowing towards a final topic for that paper, the types of cases we’re still sorting through for the database are still obviously scattershot — and thus, it may come as no surprise that democracies are struggling in ways that often don’t make the news. Stories about naturalized citizens in the Marshall Islands being denied the right to run for a seat in the Nitijela, or establishing new procedural rules when admitting electronic election evidence, do not capture the zeitgeist as easily as stories of stolen elections and massive fraud. And yet, it is the fundamental nature of rights that these violations should be taken as seriously as the (of course, more tragic and violent) instances we see.

Even then, I’m noticing that that is still a struggle at times, at least for myself, to still give these “smaller” instances the same attention — not at work, but in terms of my general thoughts and takeaways from work. After all, much of the immediate threat facing our democracy (and others) right now does seem to be the violent and dangerous stuff that happens in the news. Attacking election officials, threatening voters, raiding ballot harvesting centers. Not only do they occur, but they occur more frequently and in more places, too. And, if these dangerous acts were to succeed (I.e. successfully overturn a national election), then it seems obvious that we should afford all of our attention to that. If I had a nickel for each time in the past four years that a losing right-wing candidate’s supporters stormed a national legislature in January, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s scary that it’s that many in the first place.

On that uplifting note, it’s probably best to leave the rest of the existential dread at the door during a holiday week like this. This is going out on the 5th for everyone, but during these fractious times we all find ourselves living in — both in America and around the globe — I think we can all agree on one thing: given that the 4th fell on a Thursday this year, and given that we’ve experienced six months worth of news in about a week and a half, we (who celebrate it) deserve to enjoy yesterday a few extra extra days longer than we should. Happy late 4th everyone! We need it.

Hank