Week 1: Hello from Stockholm!
Hej everybody! Guess who’s back with another blog this summer!
I’m incredibly excited to share another summer of law school internships with you all. Last year, I interned at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), working to help protect elections, the systems that run them, and the people who administer them. It felt like incredibly important work during what was dubbed the “super year” of elections. More than 3 billion people participated in some form of democracy, casting votes to decide which parties and politicians would represent them, how they wanted their countries to run, and who they trusted to lead.
Some elections went well — and needless to say, others took turns we didn’t expect or hope for. The moral arc of the universe, as it were, does not always bend toward justice (or at least toward what I have come to understand as justice). On the one hand, that should be expected: democracy is built on the idea that people can make their own choices — even if those choices don’t always make sense to others. But it’s also essential to call out when something is going wrong — and more than that, to do something about it. Because what else is there to do?
So, this summer, I’m lucky to be continuing that same kind of work — only this time in Stockholm! I’ll be blogging about my internship at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (commonly known as International IDEA), where I’m working with their Electoral Processes team alongside some incredibly impressive people. IDEA is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and the Stockholm office is abuzz with colleagues, partners, and delegates from more than 40 countries, all gathered to champion the organization’s work.
That work isn’t always showy. It’s not about drafting sweeping constitutions full of lofty principles that echo through time. More often, it’s about the quiet work of building durable, functional democracies — educating poll workers, training county clerks (and their international equivalents), and supporting the people who make elections possible. It means researching election codes, comparing official conduct to the law, and simply paying attention. It’s not glamorous. It’s not always exciting. Sometimes it’s just plain boring. But we do it anyway — because what else is there to do?
I’m writing this at the end of my first week in Sweden, and so far, work has been a little relaxed. International IDEA has kindly given us interns the week to work remotely while the anniversary celebrations continue and while we get settled. We’ve been assigned some reading to prep for the weeks ahead, and in the meantime, I’ve been exploring the city and getting a feel for Stockholm — which has been exciting and challenging in its own right.
I never studied abroad in college, and I’ve only been out of the country a handful of times — never for more than two weeks, truthfully. This is a big shift, and I imagine it will be a challenging ten weeks, filled with personal growth, professional development, and (yes) some homesickness.
I’m 5,000 miles from Texas, nearly 4,000 miles from Williamsburg, and further than I’ve ever been from anything resembling home. I’m in what I’ve been told is the “hipster” part of Stockholm, surrounded by art students who are way cooler than me (they’re currently painting the dumpster outside my window while blasting Oasis — I’m not kidding). I still haven’t figured out how to pronounce the Swedish word for chicken (“kyckling,” for anyone curious). But it’s beautiful, it’s serene, and I already know I’m going to miss it when it ends.
And so, we soldier on — in a foreign land, working to defend a form of government that seems less popular but no less vital with each passing year, all while trying to remember the conversion rate from USD to kronor and how to quickly switch between Celsius, Fahrenheit, 12-hour time, and 24-hour time.
Because what else is there to do?
Until next week,
Hank