For the new year, you might have resolved to give up booze or bonbons.
Maybe you should join me in giving up elections instead.
Or, at the very least, in giving up the habit of investing money, time, and hope that elections might improve our communities and our world.
Because democracy and elections, often used as synonyms, are two very different things. That was the central lesson of 2024, the biggest election year in history.
More than half of humanity, 4 billion of us, lived in the more than 70 countries that held elections in 2024. Hopes were high that 2024 would be a year of greater democracy and positive change.
Instead, the Year of Elections boosted autocracies, inspired violence, hamstrung governments, frustrated publics, and ultimately damaged democracy.
“Our obsession with elections is killing democracy,” wrote Josh Lerner, co-executive director of the global democracy hub People Powered, in Boston Review. “We pour billions of dollars into elections, but… most people don’t believe that elections are delivering actual democracy — government by and for the people — and they’re right.”
In many countries, 2024 elections were merely tools of oppression. Freedom House, a Washington D.C. non-profit, found 22 contests in which incumbents attempted to jail or disqualify opponents. In at least 16 elections, Freedom House found, “voters had no real choices at the ballot box” because of electoral manipulation. And violence was a major factor in 26 of the 62 elections that Freedom House monitored; election workers faced violent attacks in 12 contests.
Assassination campaigns targeted candidates for local office in Mexico and in South Africa. India’s elections occasioned a wave of ethnic violence. France saw more than 50 documented assaults against candidates and activists, by both the far left and the far right. A South Korean opposition leader was stabbed, and Donald Trump was the target of two assassination attempts.
In Iran, mullahs criminalized any criticism of its elections. In Russia, the Kremlin threatened students who did not vote in the unfair presidential election. In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro’s regime stole the election outright.
Election losers have long protested results, but 2024 saw the rise of the “sore winner.” In Georgia, the ruling party sought to use its parliamentary victory to make the opposition unconstitutional. Trump continued threatening political opponents with prison even after his victory. In Mexico, the ruling party used its re-election victory to end the independence of the judiciary.
To be fair, some democratic optimists claimed to see good news in 2024 elections. Incumbent parties and politicians lost power or legislative seats throughout the world, notably in India, South Africa, and Japan. There were peaceful transfers of power in Senegal and Botswana. But too often power shifts produced strife rather than optimism. South Korea’s attempted presidential coup in December was the culmination of heightened political warring with an opposition party that won Congress in April elections.
This ugly year ought to teach us all a hard lesson: Elections, once seen as the epitome of democracy, are actually poisonous to democracy. “Elections are fundamentally disempowering,” says Leonora Camner, executive director of the global nonprofit Democracy Without Elections. “They’re about dividing people with slogans and stoking fears.”
Camner suggests that the logical response is to refocus on building democratic processes that empower people to govern themselves. But there are few signs of a shift. Why? Because powerful people and interests control elections. Their money determines who gets to be a candidate and which parties win.
In my country, the United States, the post-election conversation has been infuriating. The Democratic Party, which had claimed to be committed to democracy, now offers little opposition, all but surrendering to the anti-constitutional, anti-democratic plans of an authoritarian new administration. Leading liberals, who should be embracing democratic reforms, are instead obsessing about keeping donors on board for the 2026 midterm elections.
What should we do beyond elections? In a must-read post-election piece, Matt Leighninger, democratic innovation director for the (U.S.) National Civic League, suggested 10 changes to empower people to make more government decisions themselves.
These included greater use of citizens assemblies, participatory budgeting, digital democratic tools (like ActiVote), and direct democracy. Leighninger also called for rebuilding local democracy by rewriting city charters, making public meetings more civil and productive, boosting neighborhood groups and civic associations, and better measuring the effectiveness of democratic self-government.
Congress could even help — by enacting the bipartisan Building Civic Bridges Act, to boost democratic infrastructure.
“The limited, frustrating and expensive version of democracy we have today, where parties tout voting as the main way for Americans to participate in governance … doesn’t make people feel like they have a voice, or that they matter,” Leighninger wrote.
If the Year of Elections is to have a saving grace, it will have to sap us of our devotion to elections—so that we might pursue democracy instead.
Joe Mathews is a columnist for Zocalo Public Square, an ASU Media Enterprise publication, and is the founder-columnist for the planetary publication Democracy Local.
