On Nov, 5, 2024, tens of millions of Americans—perhaps well over 160 million of them—will head to polls across the country to make their selections for local, state, and federal leaders, as well as weigh in on an array of ballot questions on everything from abortion rights to approving proposed increases in the minimum wage. In fact, some Americans have already started voting by mail-in ballot.
Throughout the modern era, Americans of all political stripes have generally regarded this perennial exercise of holding and certifying “free and fair” elections as not only somewhat routine but as the benchmark by which the rest of the world should measure their own election management systems. Internationally, perhaps no single U.S. institution represents the prestige and integrity of the U.S. electoral system than the Carter Center, which has conducted 125 election observation missions in 40 countries since it began this type of work in 1989.
A voting booth is seen.
JULIA NIKHINSON/AFP via Getty Images
But this year’s U.S. election is different. Depending on how everything unfolds could drastically alter the international community’s perception of America’s role as the paradigm of how elections should be run.
Only one third of Americans believe that the 2024 elections will be both “honest and open,” while nearly half of voters harbor serious doubts about our institutions’ ability to maintain election integrity. How we got to this point traces back to the contested 2000 presidential election, in which the Supreme Court stepped in to deliver a close victory to George W. Bush over Al Gore. This has since been fueled by former President Donald Trump‘s rampant election denialism in the wake of his defeat in the 2020 presidential contest.
Fortunately, despite the insurrection of Jan. 6 that attempted to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election, across the country, those charged with organizing and overseeing elections—namely, elected secretaries of state from both parties—have been lauded for keeping our elections free of undue outside interference, sometimes in the face of enormous pressures from their very own political parties to interfere.
“Elections are the one time that citizens get to vote for their leader and figure out how they are going to be governed,” said Paige Alexander, the CEO of the Carter Center, who assumed her role in the midst of the tumult following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Those tumultuous events led Alexander to convince former President Jimmy Carter that his namesake nonprofit, seen as the gold standard for certifying election integrity around the world, needed to begin setting up democracy resilience networks stateside. And with President Carter being a Democrat, Alexander partnered with Republican-led groups such as the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum and the McCain Institute to do the work. “[We needed] to unmask how democracy and elections are working,” added Alexander.
To restore Americans’ confidence in this election, it’s all hands on deck.
“There is no doubt that there will be a significant percentage of the voting population in this year’s election that will be dubious about the end-result—no matter what that result is. Donald Trump has conditioned a slice of Americans to see anything other than his total victory as an assault on our election process. And that is very dangerous,” said Dr. Frank Luntz, a prominent Republican pollster and political consultant who has worked on myriad elections in the U.S. and around the globe. “But, if our institutions prevail as they did after the election of 2020—bending but not breaking—there is a chance that we can slowly work ourselves back to where we were a decade ago when almost all Americans believed that we had free and fair elections. It will take time, but I believe we can get there. Then we can go back to claiming the moral high ground internationally.”
Let’s hope that this November, election officials from both parties steel themselves from outside pressures and conduct all phases of the election process, from capturing and tallying votes to reporting and certifying them, in an open and transparent fashion.
Let’s hope that election officials ensure that there is increased security during the tallying and certification processes. That the Department of Homeland Security has already designated the forthcoming Jan. 6 certification in Congress as a national special security event, tasking the Secret Service to oversee its planning and affording it a level of security just like the State of the Union address, is a very positive sign in this direction.
And finally let’s hope Americans come out in droves this November. More participation ensures more voter engagement and accountability.
Let’s show the world that America is still the benchmark for what free, fair, and transparent elections look like.
Arick Wierson is a six-time Emmy Award-winning television producer.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
