A study produced annually by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance indicates that the result of almost 20% of the elections held between 2020 and 2024 was contested by one of the losing candidates or parties, after they raised doubts about the act of voting or the counting ballots.
The growing contestation of results and the continuous decline in participation is threatening the credibility of electoral processes. Report authors also found that the percentage of the voting-age population that votes has fallen by almost ten percentage points in 15 years, from 65.2% in 2008 to 55.5% in 2023.
The “very slow and long-term decline in the level of electoral participation” and the increase over the last four years in the number of disputes over election results are “indications that people think the quality of elections is not as good as it should be,” said Alexander Hudson.
I don't have a strong opinion about how credible elections were/are.
What I am confident about is that if you are not allowed to question election results, then election results will become corrupt, eventually.
reply
I've been saying grab your popcorn for awhile wrt this upcoming election, 2020 was just the previews...
Elections are largely performance art, you can't meaningfully change the government through voting when the government is who runs the elections, but then an organized challenger from the shadow state still needs to mobilize supporters as a force multiplier. Hard to do that if they're disenfranchised with the election system, so the only option is to make it a spectacle.
We're watching this now as elections are being deconstructed from one side, sanctified by the other, and turnout will be at the highest levels ever because both sides need to win on optics as we can never know the actual results
Pretty confident the number of ballots, both legit and illegit, cast in 24 will be the blow-off top... I'm curious what they look like after that.
reply