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North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy

TheDemSocialist

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In 2005, in the midst of a career of traveling around the world to help set up elections in some of the most challenging places on earth – Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Lebanon, South Africa, Sudan and Yemen, among others – my Danish colleague, Jorgen Elklit, and I designed the first comprehensive method for evaluating the quality of elections around the world. Our system measured 50 moving parts of an election process and covered everything from the legal framework to the polling day and counting of ballots.
In 2012 Elklit and I worked with Pippa Norris of Harvard University, who used the system as the cornerstone of the Electoral Integrity Project. Since then the EIP has measured 213 elections in 153 countries and is widely agreed to be the most accurate method for evaluating how free and fair and democratic elections are across time and place.

When we evolved the project I could never imagine that as we enter 2017, my state, North Carolina, would perform so badly on this, and other, measures that we are no longer considered to be a fully functioning democracy.


In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly free democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.
Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela. When it comes to the integrity of the voting district boundaries no country has ever received as low a score as the 7/100 North Carolina received. North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project.


Read more @: North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy

North Carolina is the GOP's dream. Undermine the powers of the democratically elected governor, gerrymander the state congressional districts to a point where most of them are not even competitive, and ignore the voice of the people. North Carolina is essentially on its way to becoming a one party state where democratic values are
 
I read this piece a few days ago. I get what he is saying BUT I think this is exactly what democracy looks like. 50%+1 wins. They make the rules and the minority be damned. People who want to abolish the electoral college should use NC as a case study and figure out why it would be a bad idea.
 
I read this piece a few days ago. I get what he is saying BUT I think this is exactly what democracy looks like. 50%+1 wins. They make the rules and the minority be damned. People who want to abolish the electoral college should use NC as a case study and figure out why it would be a bad idea.

Taking punitive actions to undermine the results of an election or when the democratic environment is not fair is not how a free and fair democracy operates.
 
Read more @: North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy

North Carolina is the GOP's dream. Undermine the powers of the democratically elected governor, gerrymander the state congressional districts to a point where most of them are not even competitive, and ignore the voice of the people. North Carolina is essentially on its way to becoming a one party state where democratic values are

Were you this concerned about democracy when it was Chavez doing this sort of thing (and worse)?
 
Taking punitive actions to undermine the results of an election or when the democratic environment is not fair is not how a free and fair democracy operates.

Democracy is never fair unless you are in the majority.
 
Taking punitive actions to undermine the results of an election or when the democratic environment is not fair is not how a free and fair democracy operates.

Like Stein and Clinton.
 
Were you this concerned about democracy when it was Chavez doing this sort of thing (and worse)?

Why bring up someone from another country?

Are GOPosters that desperate to defend the rightist actions of NC's legislature?

Another good reason for the 17th amendment .
 
North Carolina hasn't been a democracy for a while...
 
Stein didn't like the election outcome either.

Did her lame attempt change the outcome?

Is your lame attempt at deflecting from the OP changing the permanent damage to NC ?
 
North Carolina hasn't been a democracy for a while...

Democrats won two state-wide elections this year in NC.

The 2010 election gave the NC GOP a remap resulting in supermajorities that have no fear of their actions.

2010, 2014, 2016 elections have consequences when multiple parts of the Democratic base don't turn out.

Such as in WI, MI, and PA this year for starters .
 
Did her lame attempt change the outcome?

Is your lame attempt at deflecting from the OP changing the permanent damage to NC ?

I hear a lot of conjecture.
 
Mike Madigan and Illinois are calling, they have something to show you.
 
Democrats won two state-wide elections this year in NC.

The 2010 election gave the NC GOP a remap resulting in supermajorities that have no fear of their actions.

2010, 2014, 2016 elections have consequences when multiple parts of the Democratic base don't turn out.

Such as in WI, MI, and PA this year for starters .

That doesn't say anything.
 
For every Madigan/Illinois there are 3 NCs, with severe gerrymanders in Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and every southern state just for starters.

Democrats have their work cut out for them in 2018 if they want to turn these states around in 2020 .
 
For every Madigan/Illinois there are 3 NCs, with severe gerrymanders in Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and every southern state just for starters.

Democrats have their work cut out for them in 2018 if they want to turn these states around in 2020 .

You act like gerrymandering is specific to Republican leaning states. It isn't, at all. Learn to see malfeasance on both sides of the aisle.
 
You act like gerrymandering is specific to Republican leaning states. It isn't, at all. Learn to see malfeasance on both sides of the aisle.

There are only a few states that actually draw their maps without bias in them.
If you were to do this in CA, or IL you would change their state legislature dramatically.

The fact is gerrymandering is not set to one party.

FL Voters passed a constitutional amendment to get rid of such things.
 
Read more @: North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy

North Carolina is the GOP's dream. Undermine the powers of the democratically elected governor, gerrymander the state congressional districts to a point where most of them are not even competitive, and ignore the voice of the people. North Carolina is essentially on its way to becoming a one party state where democratic values are

If one goes by gerrymandering, both parties do it to the max. Look at New York and Illinois where the Democratic control jury rigged them. The same is true on the other side for Texas along with North Carolina. Just jumping on the Republicans in North Carolina and ignoring the Democrats in New York and Illinois is kind of a partisan effect here. I condemn both.

But neither party is willing to outlaw gerrymandering which can be done at the state level. There is nothing worst than knowing an election result even before the first vote is cast. Heck, in my district in Georgia I knew who was going to win for the next five elections or until redistricting takes place in 2021 after the 2020 census.

Gerrymandering is not what the founders and framers had in mind. But it is what political parties very much do and utilize to the max. It is interesting the framers and founding fathers considered political parties as factions. A bad thing. They feared sooner or later once political parties were formed, it would be the good of the party over the good of the nation. Loyalty to political party, not loyalty to country.
 
Read more @: North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy

North Carolina is the GOP's dream. Undermine the powers of the democratically elected governor, gerrymander the state congressional districts to a point where most of them are not even competitive, and ignore the voice of the people. North Carolina is essentially on its way to becoming a one party state where democratic values are

The observations and conclusions filtered through far left liberal/socialist progressive organizations should be viewed in that light.

Should one ascribe to such an ideological viewpoint, the skewed conclusions would likely carry weight.

Should one not be so affiliated, the conclusions should only be viewed as the ideological ramblings of agenda driven activists.
 
There are only a few states that actually draw their maps without bias in them.
If you were to do this in CA, or IL you would change their state legislature dramatically.

The fact is gerrymandering is not set to one party.

FL Voters passed a constitutional amendment to get rid of such things.

I know, tell NIMBY, he seems blissfully unaware.
 
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