US election deniers promoting democracy abroad defies reason

[Tennesseer]

US election deniers promoting democracy abroad defies reason

The power of the more than 200-year-old American model of democracy has encouraged people across the globe to fight for their rights and freedoms, often in the face of brutal authoritarians. We have personally seen the impact of U.S. influence through the more than 100 projects that we have helped design to ensure credible and legitimate elections are conducted in countries around the world.

Given this experience, we are concerned that efforts to advance democracy abroad may be compromised by board members of publicly-funded U.S. democracy promotion organizations who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 elections. This concern is exacerbated by the presence of an active promoter of the Big Lie sitting on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) not only voted against the certification of the Electoral College votes for President Biden but has also become a leading promoter of debunked conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election. Concerned NED staff raised the seeming incompatibility of Stefanik serving as a democracy promoter abroad while being associated with the Big Lie at home. Yet this year, the NED board renewed Stefanik for another term.

Forty years ago in a speech to the British parliament, President Reagan heralded the role that established democracies should play in assisting countries moving from authoritarianism toward democracy. Critics questioned the sincerity of this appeal given U.S. support to dictators simply because they identified as anti-communists. Nonetheless, there was no doubt that Reagan accepted the fundamental premise of U.S. democracy: Political power flows through elections and the loser must accept the results if the system is to be sustained.

Following Reagan’s speech, Congress funded the creation of several institutions, including the National Endowment for Democracy, to support efforts to establish democracy. Representatives of these organizations, in their work overseas, have often found themselves having to explain idiosyncrasies of the U.S. system such as the Electoral College, gerrymandering, the oversized role of money in U.S. electoral politics and the fact that chief election officers themselves are selected through partisan elections.

Nonetheless, drawing on more than 200 years of peaceful transitions from George Washington onward, democracy promoters could cite the reality that election losers always accepted the results, no matter how disappointing.

US election deniers promoting democracy abroad defies reason

[Tiny]

Aren't there lots of countries that are a democracy in name only?  

Isn't Hungary a good example of this...    it's the kind of democracy that keeps power in the hands of a few... 

Isn't that the kind of Democracy that the Republican party seems to want to create in America?    

[saveinla]

It's always the same - Do as I say, not as I do.

[djAdvocate]

the OP assumes that those "promoting democracy abroad" actually are "promoting democracy abroad".  that is actually false.  we have NEVER "promoted democracy abroad" that didn't align with OUR INTERESTS.  when democracy FAILS to align with our interests (aka, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador, Chile), we have basically destroyed democracy in those places and replaced it with something more sympathetic to our purposes.

this is well documented, btw.  it is just rarely discussed in Chest Thumping America.

we can stop lying to ourselves....any time.....

[djAdvocate]

oh, needless to say, i see these things as perfectly consistent.  there is a fairly strong strain in American politics (and now, even in the populace itself) that is HIGHLY anti-democratic.  it is just out in the open now, where the naked hypocrisy and Orwellian dialect can be dissected by anyone with an open mind.