As the republic with the oldest written constitution, the United States is the world’s beacon of democracy. These days the beacon has been dimming. Freedom House, a respected global democracy watchdog, has recently issued press releases sounding alarms about the integrity of primary elections in Wisconsin and Georgia.
The outlook for a free and fair national election in November is cloudy, not least because the president himself has predicted mass-scale voter fraud and foreign interference, and has even suggested in a Fox News interview last weekend that he might not accept the result of the election, as a result. His son-in-law has also questioned whether the election would be held on schedule due to the pandemic or another crisis.
It is not hard to imagine another round of large-scale social unrest such as the weeks-long protests over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. Given the tense situation in the country, it would take only a spark, whether spontaneous or deliberate, to ignite a social conflagration in key cities before the November 3 election.
