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10 elections to watch in 2025
This time last year, we had you buckle up for the world’s most intense year of democracy in action, with more than 65 countries holding elections involving at least 4.2 billion people — roughly half of the world’s adult population. As we now know, many of those voters turned against incumbents in 2024 — from the United Kingdom and the United States to Botswana, Japan, and South Korea, just to name a handful.
Now, we’re spotlighting the 10 most consequential elections of 2025. While it will be a less dramatic year for democracy compared to 2024, there are important themes to track as many of the countries struggle amid increasing political polarization, anti-establishment sentiment, and economic challenges.
Here are the 10 elections to watch in 2025:
1. Belarus – Jan. 26
Voters will head to the polls in Belarus to elect a president in January. The election will be neither free nor fair. The country’s opposition warns that the election “will be an exercise in ‘self-reappointment’ of [Aleksander] Lukashenko and a staged attempt to legitimize his continued rule without genuine competition.” That’s also the view in Europe and the United States.
The main question hanging over this vote is whether it will produce mass protests similar to those that followed the country’s last sham presidential election in 2020. Members of the European Parliamentcharge that, since 2020, “Tens of thousands of peaceful protesters have been arrested and nearly 1,300 political prisoners, including opposition political figures, are still kept in Belarusian detention facilities.” Tens of thousands more have been forced to flee the country.
Though Lukashenko’s government has not sent troops into Ukraine, his government has allowed Russia to use its territory as a staging ground for attacks on Ukraine since the first day of the war in February 2022. Any election-related instability in Belarus would worry not only Lukashenko but Vladimir Putin as well.
2. Germany – Feb. 23
On Nov. 6, deep ideological differences over economic reform broke up Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government, a development that allowed Germany, a country in economic crisis, to move up elections from September 2025 to February. A key question is whether the vote will produce a winner with a strong enough mandate to make the tough political choices needed to restore vitality to Europe’s largest economy.
But the thorny subject of immigration also hangs over the scene, especially after a Saudi Arabian national carried out a deadly mid-December terror attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party has surged in recent years with an anti-immigration platform, and now polls at nearly 20%, ahead of Scholz’s Social Democrats, and second only to the conservative Christian Democratic Union. Elon Musk’s endorsement could well boost the party further.
Scholz will lead a caretaker government until the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, elects a new chancellor in April or May. If the CDU maintains its lead, party chief Friedrich Merz will probably be the next chancellor.
But once the votes are counted, can the CDU form a strong enough governing coalition to maintain its political standing in the face of populist attacks from non-traditional parties? If, like Scholz’s coalition, Merz needs two parties to join, he’ll face the same internal divisions that crippled Scholz from the beginning of his term in December 2021. And if the AfD and the far-left Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht can win more than one-third of Bundestag seats, together they can threaten a new bid to allow the German government to spend more money.
3. Australia — before May
This year, Australians will go to the polls for the first time since 2022, when the Labor Party ended nine years of dominance by the conservative Liberal Party. While in power, Labor has passed major climate legislation, deftly walked the line of preserving Australia’s deep economic ties to China while pushing back on Beijing’s regional assertiveness, and imposed a landmark, and popular, social media ban for minors.
But none of that is the main issue for Australians, which is the economy. And here the Labor Party has struggled, earning terrible marks for rising housing costs, a top concern for more than 90% of voters, according to one industry poll. A flurry of housing legislation in recent months has been too little, too late. The bad vibes extend to wage growth too, even though salaries have grown faster than inflation for the past year.
Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese nor his main opponent, Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton, is well-liked, meaning Australians are choosing between unpopular options. Whoever wins could easily wind up with a minority government, leaving Australians with a weak government that may be challenged to address big problems.
4. The Philippines — May 12
The last two years have seen a radical redirection of Manila’s foreign policy as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — the son of the strongman by the same name who ruled the archipelago from 1965-1986 — moves away from China and toward its traditional ally, the US. But this shift has caused a major rift with Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, and it’s making the upcoming midterm election look like a dynastic knife fight.
Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte, is Marcos’ vice president, and relations between the two are frosty to say the least. During a November speech, she said, “This country is going to hell because we are led by a person who doesn’t know how to be a president and who is a liar,” and then addressed alleged threats to her life by seeming to suggest that she’d arrange retaliatory assassinations of her own.
She’s denied that her comments represent a threat, but she now faces three impeachment complaints — over the threats, alleged misuse of funds, and violating the constitution.
And it gets even juicier. Rodrigo Duterte himself is running for mayor of Davao City, the largest metropolis in the south, where he held office for over 20 years. It’s not a coincidence: His son is the sitting mayor there, and the hope is that having his name on the ballot will help turn out his base to fill the open senate and house seats with Duterte loyalists.
That would allow the clan to check Marcos’ actions in the second half of his term and set Sara up for a run at the top job in 2028. Marcos will be term-limited by then … but it’s rumored that his cousin, the house speaker, will succeed him.
In short, it’s like “Game of Thrones” but with better weather.
5. Bolivia – Aug. 17
Things have been … tense in the landlocked Andean state this year, thanks to a farcical, poorly organized coup attempt against sitting President Luis Arce and allegations of an assassination attempt on his mentor-turned-archrival, former President Evo Morales. Their rivalry is compounding an uncertain economic future in South America’s poorest country, which has seen its once-booming natural gas industry go belly up.
Citizens have been demonstrating against unaffordable fuel and energy prices for months, but they’re getting little help from the authorities, who are busy weaponizing the justice system against political rivals and maneuvering to control the left-wing Movement for Socialism party that dominates Bolivian politics.
Arce scored a key advantage in that fight when Bolivia’s constitutional court ruled in late 2024 that Morales was ineligible to run — but don’t count him out. Bolivia’s court system is deeply politicized, and Morales could well find a way back onto the ballot. We’re watching for the possibility that he runs as vice president with Senate leader Andrónico Rodríguez at the top of the ticket.
We’re also watching Manfred Reyes Villa, a conservative who may be able to use the split on the left to advance his own candidacy.
6. Argentina – Oct. 26
Has the pain been worth it? That, in many ways, is the most basic question on the ballot as Argentina heads into midterm elections in October for half the lower house and a third of the senate.
The “pain,” of course, is anarcho-capitalist President Javier Milei’s radical “chainsaw” policy of gutting public spending and regulations to address decades of economic mismanagement, triple-digit inflation, and chronic debt crises.
So far, Milei has proven many of the haters wrong. The economy, Latin America’s third largest, emerged from recession in late 2024. Inflation has fallen from 25% per month to less than 3%. Economists expect the economy to grow as much as 5% in 2025.
But, at the same time, the share of Argentines living in poverty has soared by more than 10 percentage points, to 53%, since he took office. There have been large protests against his spending cuts. And he has yet to take some big, and potentially painful, steps such as scrapping capital controls, which could stoke inflation again.
Milei’s small, libertarian party, La Libertad Avanza (“Liberty Advances”), currently lacks a majority in both houses, but he hopes to change that and is pleading for voters to make a “big rumble in the elections.”Heading into the new year, La Libertad Avanza was the clear front-runner in polls, with 46% saying they were ready to cast a ballot for MIlei’s party, compared to just 14% for the traditional left-wing Peronist party and 7% for the establishment right.
7. Czech Republic – before October
The ANO party of populist billionaire Andrej Babiš, who has clashed with the EU and is skeptical of support for Ukraine, looks set for a big comeback in this fall’s parliamentary elections amid broader malaise and dissatisfaction with the current center-right coalition of PM Petr Fiala.
Babiš was prime minister from 2017-2021, and in 2023 he lost the presidential election by nearly 20 points to Petr Pavel, a former NATO general who strongly backs Ukraine.
But with the current governing coalition in turmoil and “Ukraine fatigue” growing ahead of a possible push by US President-elect Donald Trump to end the war there, Czechs are in the mood for change again.
A stunning recent poll showed fewer than half of Czechs now think life has improved since the fall of communism in 1989. ANO capitalized on that disillusionment in fall 2024 regional and Senate ballots, ringing up big results even with abysmal turnout.
Heading into 2025, polls show ANO with 30% support against the governing coalition’s 20%. If Babiš wins, he would (re)join a Central European eurosceptic populist axis featuring Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s populist PM Robert Fico.
8. Tanzania – October 2025
President Samia Suluhu Hassan is expected to win reelection under the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), which has held power for six decades. She will likely face veteran politician Tundu Lissu, the current chairperson of Chadema, Tanzania’s main opposition party.
Hassan will likely tout her political reforms, including reversing some of the most authoritarian policies of her predecessor, John Magufuli, who banned political rallies, censored the media, and clamped down on opposition parties. That has empowered Hassan’s political opponents, though a shadow of the old ways persists: earlier this year two Chadema politicianswere abducted and tortured, and one of them was murdered. Three more Chadema politicianswere killed in connection with local elections in November.
Who’s watching this election? Likely China. Tanzania is the fifth-largest state in Africa, and China has been its maintrading partner for eight years. China has also funded several megaprojects, including a recently announced railway revitalization with Zambia. The CCP has a close relationship with Tanzania’s ruling party, and China runs a leadership school outside Dar Es Salaam that counsels African politicians on how to replicate China’s authoritarian model and cement one-party rule — like the CCM’s 60-year reign — in their countries.
9. Canada – before Oct. 25
Canadian law requires that its next federal election be held by Oct. 25, 2025, but it could come far sooner.
The Liberals, in power since 2015, lost their formal support from the left-leaning New Democratic Party last September, leaving them vulnerable to a no-confidence vote. On Dec. 20, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh announced he would trigger such a vote at the earliest opportunity – but the House of Commons is in recess until Jan. 27, 2025. That prompted Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to ask Canada’s titular head of state, Governor General Mary Simon, to bring the House back earlier – a constitutional nonstarter, as she only takes counsel from the prime minister. The Conservatives desperately want an election, as they hold a 23-point lead in the polls.
The drama followed the shock resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Dec. 16, which triggered calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation from both inside and outside his party. The calls multiplied over the ensuing days, and Trudeau is now reportedly considering his future, though he has said he is not resigning over the holiday break. Should he step down, a leadership contest and prorogation of the House of Commons would follow, meaning that an election would likely happen before October.
The main issues are inflation, immigration, and a housing shortage, overlaid with anxiety about the incoming Trump administration’s promise of up to 25% tariffs on Canadian exports to the US. Should Trudeau remain leader, many also see the vote as a referendum on his tenure — at a time when only 19% of voters think he should stay on.
10. Chile – Nov. 16
South America’s most prosperous economy has traveled a rough political road the last few years, with two consecutive efforts to reform the constitution going down in flames — and taking ruling President Gabriel Boric with them.
The young reformer has failed to advance the significant changes he promised and is prohibited constitutionally from serving another consecutive term.
But rather than major constitutional change, Chileans are eager for economic growth and a serious attempt to tackle growing drug crime and violence, which have surged in part due to the arrival of organized crime gangs from Venezuela.
We’re a long way off from the ballots, but two candidates are out ahead: former Labor Minister Evelyn Matthei, from the right-wing Independent Democratic Union, and the far-right populist José Antonio Kast. Matthei comes from a well-known political family in Santiago and has come close to the top job before. Unfortunately for her, voters around the world seem to be in an anti-establishment mood.
Kast, on the other hand, is cast in a more radical mold. His Republican party broke away from Matthei’s in 2018, in part because they wanted to be less critical of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Kast, an ultra-conservative Catholic and nationalist who has proposed border trenches to stop illegal immigration, lost to Borić in the last election but is poised for a strong run again.
All of that leaves the left in the lurch, but former President Michelle Bachelet — still the country’s single most popular politician — could yet throw her hat in the ring to make things interesting.
Canadian parties choose to see, hear no foreign mischief
When about 200 foreign students arrived by bus at the Liberal nomination meeting in the leafy suburban Toronto community of Don Valley North in 2019, Han Dong thought nothing of it.
“I didn’t pay attention to busing international students because … I didn’t understand it as an irregularity,” he testified later.
Dong, who was born in Shanghai but has lived in Canada since he was 13, was seeking the Liberal nomination at the time, and he wanted the support of Chinese students because that was allowed under party rules – and his opponents could be expected to do the same. The prize was worth the trouble: Whoever won the nomination was almost certain to represent the riding in the House of Commons.
Dong later testified that he was unaware that the Chinese consulate threatened the students and arranged the buses, as is now alleged, meaning Beijing got their chosen candidate into the House of Commons, apparently without the candidate knowing.
Reluctant to see the problem
That nomination contest, and Dong’s career in the House, later became controversial when Canadian spies leaked unproven allegations about his connections to Beijing, which led to his exit from the caucus, a lawsuit, and Trudeau reluctantly calling a commission of inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian politics.
In testimony at the inquiry earlier this year, representatives of the Liberals — and other parties — appeared reluctant to acknowledge that there might be problems in their parties. Azam Ishmael, executive director of the party, for instance, testified that he had not read the report that revealed what the Canadian spooks knew about interference in Dong’s nomination race.
It’s not just the Liberals who seem to see no evil, hear no evil ...
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has been happy to castigate the Liberals for their alleged connections to the Chinese government — which is fair enough since the Chinese seem to have tried to help the Liberals in the last election. But Poilievre has refused to be sworn to secrecy for fear it will restrict what he can say about the facts. That means he can’t read the details, even though Indian foreign interference may have played a role in the leadership race that made him the leader of his party.
Busloads of voters
Both China and India are accused of using proxies to influence their diasporas to support candidates they favor and block those they oppose. This is possible, in part, because the parties leave the door open to them.
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who leads the ongoing inquiry, warned that nomination races can be a “gateway” for foreign influence.
Under Canadian electoral law, the parties decide who can vote in their nomination battles. For Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democrats, that includes teenagers and noncitizens, like the Chinese students who seem to have made the difference in Han Dong’s nomination.
Dong was right to point out that it didn’t seem irregular because it was not against the rules. Grassroots organizers routinely bus new Canadians to nomination meetings. Since many ridings are, like Don Valley North, very likely to be won by the incumbent party, that means that in Canada, the real elections are often decided by whoever can get the bigger busloads of new Canadians to a meeting hall when the party picks its candidate.
Bad foreign policy
This has serious implications for Canadian foreign policy since diaspora politics pressures parties to stay on the good side of the mysterious people (read: countries) arranging for busloads of voters to show up.
Trudeau’s government has a terrible relationship with Modi because the Indians are suspicious of the Canadian Sikhs in Trudeau’s coalition, accusing them of sponsoring terrorist attacks in India. They are similarly suspicious of Jagmeet Singh, leader of the NDP. Trudeau has accused Modi of being behind the assassination of a Sikh activist in British Columbia.
This conflict is rooted in the powerful role that Canadian Sikhs play in grassroots political struggles in all the parties. Other diaspora groups also play prominent roles, and those groups end up binding the hands of the people conducting Canadian foreign affairs.
Eurasia Group Senior Analyst Graeme Thompson, formerly a policy analyst with Global Affairs Canada, says Canadian diplomats can’t avoid the political reality of diaspora politics, which makes it hard to develop policy focused on the country’s national interest.
“It’s a huge problem for Canadian foreign policy making to have politicians primarily making policy on the basis of domestic political considerations that are driven by diaspora politics.”
More rules on the way
It seems clear that it should be harder for noncitizens to participate in Canadian nominations, but the parties don’t want to close the gateway Hogue identified. They benefit from the money, energy, and busloads of voters, so they don’t want to bar noncitizens from voting in nomination battles.
“The other parties seem to like the idea of being much loosey goosier about who can vote in a nomination race,” says Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, which only allows citizens to vote in party races.
She thinks that the other parties should tighten their rules, thus avoiding a complicated and potentially expensive regulatory structure, but those parties benefit from the status quo, so it will likely fall to Hogue to urge them to make changes when she issues her report at the end of the year.
But there is no guarantee that they will do whatever she proposes, and there could be another election before she issues her report, which means India may be tempted to help the Conservatives, and China may again work against them.
It would be better if the Canadian parties could work together to signal that they won’t stand for foreigners interfering in Canadian politics, but in a pre-election atmosphere of deep mutual distrust, that may be too much to hope for.
A woman attends a campaign rally by former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Crotona Park in the Bronx borough of New York City, on May 23, 2024.
Bloc by Bloc: Trump gambles to woo Black voters
This GZERO 2024 election series looks at America’s changing voting patterns, bloc by bloc.
________________________________
Updated, Nov. 1, 2024: This piece began our Bloc by Bloc series back in May and can serve as an explainer of how portions of the Black community are realigning away from the Democratic Party. But it was written before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race – and, as we all know, he was replaced by Kamala Harris, a member of the Black community herself.
Flash forward to Nov. 1. A nationwide New York Times/Siena College poll of Black likely voters from mid-October found that 80% of Black voters plan to vote for Harris, an uptick from the 74% who said they would vote for Biden.
But it’s all going to come down to turnout. Democrats need a tsunami of Black voters to win the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, and they have not quite been hitting their targets in the final few days of the campaign.
In North Carolina, where Harris desperately needs to win over Black voters to drive Democratic turnout to offset Trump’s dominance in rural parts of the state, early voting is showing red flags. So far, Black voters are making up 18% of early voting, two points lower than what she is projected to need to win the state.
In Atlanta, where 42% of the population is Black, early voting shows similar warning signals. Republicans are turning out in higher numbers to vote early than they did in 2022. Pollster Mark Rountree suggests the switch is because of a 22% drop-off in early voting in the Black community compared to 2020.
As the results roll in Tuesday, keep your eyes on Atlanta’s Fulton and DeKalb counties and its surrounding suburbs of Gwinnett, Henry, and Cobb. These counties are expected to be bellwethers of how Harris is tracking with Black voters nationwide.
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Original version from May 2024:
Donald Trump was trapped in New York City until the jury reached a verdict in his hush money trial last week, but he made the most of his time in his hometown – visiting a bodega in Harlem, dropping by a construction site, hosting a photo op at a local firehouse, and becoming the first Republican candidate to host a campaign rally in New York City since Ronald Reagan.
His choice of rally location – a deep-blue district in the Bronx where 95% of the population is Black or Hispanic and 35% live below the poverty line – was no accident. While Black voters remain the most loyal bloc of the Democratic coalition that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stitched together four years ago, that support appears to be waning.
Six months before the election, Trump has picked up as much as 18% of the Black vote — up from 8% in 2020 and 6% in 2016. Polls can only tell us so much this far out from the election, but a recent poll conducted by the University of Chicago found that just 33% of young Black people would vote for Biden if the election were held today. While the poll showed significant undecided and third-party sentiment – only 23% said they would support Trump – it's undeniably a plummet from the 80% of young Black voters supporting Biden in 2020.
Trump’s message to Black voters is that Democrats have long taken their vote for granted and that they were better off – in particular from an economic standpoint – under his administration than under Biden’s. With November’s election predicted to be decided by a few thousand votes in a couple of key states, it matters that Trump is trying, and succeeding, to make inroads with voters of color.
At his rally in the Bronx on May 23, Trump cast himself as a better president for Black and Hispanic voters, attacking Biden on the economy and immigration. He insisted “the biggest negative impact” of the flood of migrants to New York is “against our Black population and our Hispanic population who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose.” Many in the crowd responded by chanting, “Build the wall,” a reference to Trump’s push as president to build a US-Mexico border barrier.
“I’ve voted for Democrats in the Bronx up and down the ticket for my whole life,” rally attendee Daniella Martinez said. She still identifies as a Democrat but decided to hop on the Trump train because she worried the influx of migrants to the city was straining her daughter’s public school and making their neighborhood less safe. “But look where Democrats have got New York. I’m here because I am ready for a change.”
When pressed about whether Trump could be considered a change, given that he occupied the Oval Office just four years ago, Martinez said: “I didn’t have to work a second job four years ago. Any change from Biden’s economy is a change I am going to vote for.”
Since Trump’s guilty verdict last Thursday, he has compared his legal troubles to the unfairness that Black communities disproportionately face in the justice system. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, amplified this on CNN on Friday. “The reason we’re seeing so many African Americans come into the Trump campaign — two big things: jobs and justice,” he said. “As an African American born and raised in the Deep South who had concerns about our justice system as it relates to race, I’m now seeing it play out from a partisan perspective.”
Scott, who wants to be Trump’s vice president, has pledged $15 million of PAC money to Black voter outreach, arguing that Black men, in particular, could be key in securing Trump’s win. On Tuesday, Reps. Byron Donalds, of Florida, who is also rumored to be on Trump’s VP short list, and Wesley Hunt, of Texas, ventured into Philadelphia to make their pitch for Trump at an event billed as “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars.”
“We were better off under Republicans than we were Democrats,” Hunt said. “The reason why the Democrats have a hold on the Black community is because our parents’ parents’ parents keep telling us, ‘You got to vote Democrat. It’s up to us in this generation to say, ‘well, why?’”
But according to Eurasia Group’s US analyst Noah Daponte-Smith, what may matter more than Trump’s marginal gains with Black voters is that Biden is hemorrhaging their support.
“Biden is currently running 22 points behind his 2020 performance among Black voters, says Deponte-Smith. “There does seem to be a consensus among analysts and political scientists that the Black vote has steadily moved away from Democrats as we have exited the Obama era.”
But Biden is fighting back. The president has ridiculed Trump’s strategy, saying last week that Trump is “pandering and peddling lies and stereotypes for your vote, so he can win for himself, not for you.”
He and Vice President Kamala Harris also traveled to Philadelphia last Wednesday to launch “Black Voters for Biden-Harris” to bolster outreach efforts and engage Black voters. The campaign is an acknowledgment that Biden knows he needs to fight if he wants to keep the 92% majority of Black voters that were integral to his win in 2020.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) talks to reporters after surviving a vote to remove him from the Speaker’s position, Washington, DC, May 8, 2024. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a motion to vacate the Speaker’s office, which was defeated by a motion to table the issue immediately afterward.
OPINION: Vibes-based lawmaking isn’t helping us, Speaker Johnson.
With so many problems in the world right now, it seems odd to spend time trying to solve ones that don’t exist.
But that’s exactly what happened this week when House Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a new law to crack down on non-citizens voting in US federal elections.
The legislation, known as the SAVE Act, would outlaw non-citizen voting – which is already illegal – and require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Now, some people, mostly Republicans, say it’s not unreasonable to expect adults to produce ID before making a decision about who should lead the “free world.” Others, mostly Democrats, point to evidence that voter ID requirements – particularly for passports or birth certificates – tend to suppress eligible voter turnout, particularly for minority voters. There are fair arguments on both sides.
The Supreme Court, for its part, has struck down a state-led requirement for citizenship documents, and a North Carolina court is weighing the issue of voter ID more broadly as we speak.
But leave all that aside for a moment. There’s a more fundamental problem with Johnson’s bill. It’s aimed at ghosts.
Asked about the scale of the problem of non-citizen voting, Johnson said:
“The answer is that it’s unanswerable.”
“We all know intuitively,” he explained, “that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”
This vibes-based intuition parrots a longstanding talking point of GOP boss Donald Trump, who has complained – falsely – that voter fraud cost him the popular vote in 2016 and the election itself in 2020. With just six months until his rematch with Joe Biden, Trump and his allies are keen to seed the idea that voter fraud – particularly among the rapidly rising undocumented migrant population – will decide the outcome. With 60% of Republicans worried about the credibility of the electoral system, Trump knows his audience.
But the question for Johnson is not unanswerable. The answer is that there is, in fact, no evidence for these claims.
In 2017, for example, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU looked closely at the 2016 election, a contest in which Donald Trump claimed he had lost the popular vote because 3-5 million illegal immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton.
After reviewing 23 million voter names, in 42 precincts, in 12 states, how many instances of non-citizen voting did the Brennan study find?
Thirty. That’s 0.0001% of the votes.
It turns out non-citizens, in perpetual danger of deportation, aren’t eager to write their names down on a voting register, leaving indelible evidence of a federal crime.
This tracks with other studies of voter fraud, nearly all of which show that it’s exceedingly rare. The state of Georgia, for example, conducted a review of its voter rolls in 2022 and found that of the four million votes cast by Georgians in the midterms of that year, there were 17 instances of voter fraud.
That’s not to say there aren’t real concerns about the election. How might AI distort voter perceptions of the candidates? Will foreign powers try to sway voters’ choices? Will election workers be safe? Nearly 40% of them say they have experienced threats, violence, or harassment, in part by people riled up with false narratives about fraud.
But instead of addressing those serious worries, the Speaker of the House is proposing to Make Illegal Things Illegal Again™, based on information he does not have, about a phenomenon that doesn’t exist.
This kind of vibes-based lawmaking isn’t going to SAVE us from anything.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks during a news conference at the US Capitol on May 7, 2024, in Washington, DC.
Hard Numbers: GOP makes illegal thing illegal, Immigration inquiries overload Ottawa, Westjet makes its flight, US gas demand sputters
0.0001: Republican lawmakers in the US have proposed a new bill that would make it illegal for non-citizens to vote in US elections. As it happens, this is already illegal. House Speaker Mike Johnson explained the measure by arguing that “we all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting” but acknowledged that this is “not easily provable.” A 2016 NYU study of more than 20 million votes in 42 jurisdictions found that 0.0001% were cast by non-citizens.
184,600: Canada’s immigration bureaucracies have been overwhelmed by requests for information about stuck or pending cases, with more than 180,000 inquiries over each of the past two years. That’s more than triple the volume from 2018. Three years ago, the government pledged to address the backlogs, but watchdogs say it hasn’t done enough.
9: It’s flight time after all. After nine months of tough negotiations, Westjet reached a tentative agreement with the union representing its maintenance workers, narrowly avoiding a work stoppage this week that would have crippled Canada’s second-largest airline. The company last year agreed to give its pilots a 24% pay raise.
8.63 million: Is America’s economy hitting the brakes? The four-week average demand for gasoline fell to 8.63 million barrels per day, reaching the lowest early May level since the pandemic crushed demand for transportation. Demand for diesel and heating oil was also at post-pandemic lows. Analysts were split about whether the weak demand reflects a slowing economy or the rising use of renewables.A sign at the flagship event of a nationwide march for voting rights on the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington in August, 2021.
15th Amendment as relevant as ever on 154th birthday
Saturday marks 154 years since the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution – Feb. 3, 1870 – which guaranteed Black men the right to vote. Given it’s Black History Month and an election year, this makes it the perfect time to revisit this vital moment in US history.
Though the amendment was part of an effort to set the US on a more equitable path in the post-Civil War era, it didn’t take long after ratification for local governments to institute racist policies – Jim Crow laws – aimed at disenfranchising Black people.
Nearly 100 years after it was ratified, the federal government finally moved to protect the rights enshrined in the 15th Amendment with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which barred racial discrimination in voting and helped dismantle Jim Crow laws.
But legal experts and rights groups in recent years have raised alarm bells about ongoing threats to the Voting Rights Act and court decisions that have weakened it. And despite a June 2023 Supreme Court decision that upheld a key provision of the law, many contend that more must be done to protect voting rights and prevent discriminatory practices.
People of color made up 30% of eligible voters in the US in 2020 but represented just over 22% of all votes cast, according to a new study from the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. “There’s outright voter-suppression efforts still happening in the US,” says Mindy Romero, the lead author of the report and director of the center.
Research shows people of color continue to face an array of disparities and challenges when it comes to voting, ranging from longer wait times on Election Day than white voters and mass voter roll purges to being disproportionately impacted by strict voter ID laws.
Indeed, more than a century and a half after the 15th Amendment came to be, it seems the US still has a long way to go in the fight to eliminate racial barriers at the ballot box.
FILE PHOTO: Voting booths are set up at the Shawnee County Elections Office
Hard Numbers: The world gets set to vote, Myanmar rebels make gains, Uganda nabs terror boss, Israel’s Cabinet tangles over West Bank taxes, Jury convicts SBF
40: If you love to “get out the vote,” then next year is your time to shine. No fewer than 40 different countries, representing more than 40% of the world’s population and 40% of global GDP, will go to the polls in 2024. Some of the standout elections include those in Taiwan, India, Mexico, Indonesia, Russia, possibly Ukraine, the European Parliament, and the United States.
4: Myanmar’s military junta has lost control of four towns along the Chinese border, including a key trade hub, as ethnic militias in the area ramp up their insurgency against the government. Beijing on Thursday called for a cease-fire in the conflict, which the UN fears has displaced thousands of people.
6: Ugandan forces say they’ve captured the leader of an Islamic State-linked insurgent militia in a raid earlier this week that killed six of his henchmen. The commander is accused of murdering two foreign tourists and their guide in a national park several weeks ago.
30: After a heated Israeli cabinet debate about whether to release tax revenue that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the government agreed late Thursday to transfer the funds -- but there's a catch. At least 30% of the money, a portion destined for bureaucrats in the Gaza Strip who are still on the PA payroll, will be withheld. The decision was a compromise between hardliners who wanted to withhold the funds entirely because the PA hasn't explicitly condemned Hamas and pragmatists who thought it unwise to further weaken the PA at a time of rising West Bank unrest.
7: On Thursday, a New York federal jury found crypto exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of stealing billions of dollars from customers, convicting him of all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. He now awaits sentencing -- set for March 28, 2024 -- and faces up to 115 years in prison.
Heat map of Canada and US voter registration levels
The Graphic Truth: Canada tops US in voter registration
The United States and Canada are two of the world’s biggest advanced democracies. But when it comes to elections, the Great White North is far better at registering its voters.
Canada makes it easy and even encourages voters to register as late as Election Day. It can do this because it has a centralized voter database shared among the provinces, enabling them to keep up-to-date information about where voters should be voting, which eliminates fears of voter fraud.
In the US – where fears of voter fraud run rampant – the main obstacle appears to be a lack of both cooperation and willpower. There’s no push to proactively register voters, and because there’s no centralized voter registration database, there’s limited communication between states.
The US is trying to roll out a centralized system, called Electronic Registration Information Center or ERIC, to inform states if a voter moves or dies, so that the names can be removed from the voter rolls. But to gain access, states must pledge to proactively register new voters who move to their state.
At its peak, ERIC had 33 states enrolled, but since the 2020 election, it has become the target of misinformation campaigns. Seven GOP-led states have pulled out of the interstate database over concerns about voter privacy and to protest the proactive registration requirement.