Democracy is most likely to break down through a series of incremental actions that cumulatively undermine the electoral process, resulting in a presidential election that produces an outcome clearly at odds with the voters’ will. It is this comparatively quiet but steady subversion, rather than a violent coup or insurrection against a sitting president, that Americans today have to fear most.
Five sets of actions fuel this corrosion: limiting participation in elections; controlling election administration; legitimizing and mobilizing social support for methods to obstruct or overturn an election; using political violence to further that end; and politicizing the regular military or National Guard to delegitimize election outcomes.
We have identified 18 steps to democratic breakdown and assigned a score of one to three alarm bells for each step, which indicates how big a threat we believe it poses to our democracy now.
1 State legislatures pass laws that directly restrict voting access by making early and mail voting more difficult, imposing stricter voter ID requirements or increasing the likelihood of faulty voter purges. This year, legislatures in 19 states have passed new restrictions.
What to watch for: In solidly blue or red states, changing voting laws won’t make much difference, but new laws in states such as Florida, Georgia and Arizona...
Three Oklahomans have been charged as part of a federal crackdown on health care fraud throughout the United States. More than 450 people, including doctors and nurse practitioners across 45 states...