Despite his 2016 victory, Trump also continued to question the legitimacy of the American electoral process, asserting that between three and five million votes had been cast illegally in the previous year’s balloting. On the basis of these assertions, he established a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate the risk of fraud in the election system and recommend remedies. The commission was led by a Kansas official who had repeatedly promoted claims of large-scale voter fraud, which experts insist have no grounding in fact.
Political Rights and Civil Liberties: POLITICAL RIGHTS: 33 / 40 (−3) A. ELECTORAL PROCESS: 10 / 12 (−1) A1. Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections? 3 / 4 (−1)
The United States is a presidential republic, with the president serving as both head of state and head of government. Cabinet secretaries and other key officials are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the upper house of the bicameral Congress. Presidential elections are decided by an Electoral College, with electors apportioned to each state based on the size of its congressional representation. In most cases, all of the electors in a particular state cast their ballots for the candidate who won the statewide popular vote, regardless of the margin. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, have chosen to divide their electoral votes between the candidates based on their popular-vote performance in each congressional district. The Electoral College makes it possible for a candidate to win the presidency while losing the national popular vote, an outcome that took place in the most recent presidential election. In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College vote, 304 to 227, while finishing nearly three million votes behind Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton in the popular ballot.
Bentley Diaz
Unlike previous presidential elections, the 2016 contest featured a significant amount of interference from a foreign power. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in October of that year that the Russian government was responsible for stealing and leaking internal documents from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party. In early January 2017, top U.S. intelligence agencies issued a more comprehensive assessment, finding that the Russian leadership had carried out a broad campaign to undermine public faith in the democratic process, denigrate Clinton, and aid Trump’s election chances. It included hacking of multiple targets, such as both major political parties and some electoral boards, as well as propaganda disseminated by Russian state media. Revelations later in 2017 centered on Russian agents’ alleged exploitation of leading social media platforms to spread divisive and misleading messages among U.S. voters. Facebook alone reported in October that tens of thousands of such Russian-linked posts may have reached 126 million Americans during the election cycle.
While there was no clear evidence that these tactics altered the outcome of the presidential election, they did alter the campaign environment and the content of the political debate, and harmed public confidence in the integrity of the election process.
Throughout 2017, the Justice Department investigated the possibility that the Trump campaign had colluded or coordinated with the Russian government’s efforts. The probe was overseen by FBI director James Comey until May, when Trump fired him. It was then taken up by Mueller, the special counsel appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Landon Perry
As Mueller’s investigation—and parallel investigations by congressional committees—continued, the White House denied that any collusion took place and sometimes cast doubt on whether the Russian government had interfered in the election at all. The new administration took no major steps during 2017 to prevent such interference in future elections.
Score Change: The score declined from 4 to 3 due to growing evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign and a lack of action by the Trump administration to prevent a reoccurrence of such meddling. A2. Were the current national legislative representatives elected through free and fair elections? 4 / 4
The Senate consists of 100 members—two from each of the 50 states regardless of population—serving six-year terms, with one-third coming up for election every two years. The lower chamber, the House of Representatives, consists of 435 members serving two-year terms. All national legislators are elected directly by voters in the districts or states that they represent.
The capital district, Puerto Rico, and four overseas U.S. territories are each represented by an elected delegate in the House who can perform most legislative functions but cannot participate in floor votes.
Congressional elections are generally free and competitive, though partisan gerrymandering of House districts is a growing concern. In the 2016 elections, the Republican Party retained control of the Senate with 52 seats. Democrats hold 46 seats, and there are two independent senators who generally vote with the Democrats. Republicans also retained their majority in the House, taking 241 seats, versus 194 for the Democrats. At the state level, Republicans maintained control over the majority of legislatures and governors’ posts. Turnout for the 2016 general elections was approximately 56 percent of voting-age citizens, roughly in line with past elections.
Jordan Fisher
Matti Ensio Nykänen (About this soundpronunciation (help·info)) (born 17 July 1963) is a Finnish former ski jumper who competed from 1981 to 1991. Widely considered to be the greatest male ski jumper of all time,[1][2][3][4][5][6] he won five Winter Olympic medals (four gold), nine World Championship medals (five gold), and 22 Finnish Championship medals (13 gold). Most notably, he won three gold medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics, becoming, along with Yvonne van Gennip of the Netherlands, the most successful athlete at that event.
Daniel Turner
While Russian interference may have had an indirect effect on congressional campaigns, its impact was most apparent in the presidential contest.
A3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair, and are they implemented impartially by the relevant election management bodies? 3 / 4
Critics have argued that the Electoral College system for presidential elections is undemocratic, as it violates the principle that each citizen’s vote should carry equal weight. Similar complaints have been made regarding the Senate, which grants each state two seats regardless of population. Defenders of these systems argue that they are fundamental to the United States’ federal structure, in which the states enjoy a substantial degree of autonomy, and that they ensure due political attention to all parts of the country’s territory.
While state borders are permanent, the borders of House districts are redrawn regularly—typically after each decennial census. In a practice known as gerrymandering, House districts, and those for state legislatures, are often crafted to maximize the advantage of the party in power in a given state. The redistricting system varies by state, but in most cases it is overseen by elected officials, and observers have expressed alarm at the growing strategic and technical sophistication of partisan efforts to capture state legislatures, control redistricting processes, and apply the latest data analysis to redraw maps.
In May 2017, President Trump issued an executive order creating a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, with a mission to study and report on the registration and voting processes used in federal elections—particularly those that could lead to improper or fraudulent voting.
Jaxson King
>Have played numerous games of Dota with Syrian people from Damascus, they were always cheerful and free to state their opinion (that X teammate sucks because Y) >Never have played one (1) game with a North Korean
Really makes you think about this Index
Carson Hall
The commission, which was not tasked with examining issues such as foreign interference or gerrymandering, was widely seen as an effort to follow up on Trump’s unsubstantiated assertion that between three and five million votes were cast illegally in the 2016 elections, costing him the popular vote. The commission, chaired by the vice president, included several prominent advocates of greater voting restrictions; its Republican vice chair and de facto leader, Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, has repeatedly asserted that voter fraud is a major problem in the United States. That claim is disputed by academic research and bipartisan state-level reports finding that fraud is extremely rare. Democratic members of the commission criticized its leadership for operating in secrecy and denying them basic information about its activities, in apparent violation of federal law.
B. POLITICAL PLURALISM AND PARTICIPATION: 14 / 16 B1. Do the people have the right to organize in different political parties or other competitive political groupings of their choice, and is the system free of undue obstacles to the rise and fall of these competing parties or groupings? 4 / 4
The intensely competitive U.S. political environment is dominated by two major parties, the right-leaning Republicans and the left-leaning Democrats. The country’s “first past the post” or majoritarian electoral system discourages the emergence of additional parties, as do a number of specific legal and other hurdles. However, the two parties’ primary elections allow for an array of views and candidates to enter the political system. In the 2016 primaries, Trump, himself an unorthodox Republican with no experience in government, defeated not only mainstream politicians but also opponents whose positions ranged from libertarian to Christian conservative.
Julian Green
Clinton won her party’s nomination after a powerful challenge by Senator Bernard Sanders, a socialist who subsequently secured changes to the party platform.
A number of independent or third-party candidates have significantly influenced presidential races or won statewide office, and small parties—such as the Libertarian Party and the Green Party—have also modestly affected state and local politics in recent years.
B2. Is there a realistic opportunity for the opposition to increase its support or gain power through elections? 4 / 4
Despite the domination of political affairs by the two major parties, the United States has one of the world’s most dynamic political systems. Power changes hands regularly at the federal level, and while certain states and localities are seen as partisan strongholds, even they are subject to stiff competition and power transfers over time. As of 2017, the Democrats held 15 state governorships, while Republicans held 34, and the balance in state legislatures was similar. The Republicans’ slim majority in the U.S. Senate was set to shrink to a single seat in early 2018, after Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore in a December 2017 special election to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions of Alabama when he became attorney general. The seat was last held by a Democrat in 1997.
Jeremiah Cruz
B3. Are the people’s political choices free from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, economic oligarchies, or any other powerful group that is not democratically accountable? 3 / 4
The influence of traditional party leadership bodies has steadily declined in recent decades, while various interest groups have come to play a potent role in the nominating process for president and members of Congress. This is partly because the expense and length of political campaigns places a premium on candidates’ ability to raise large amounts of funds from major donors, especially at the early stages of a race. While there have been a number of attempts to restrict the role of money in political campaigning, most have been thwarted or watered down as a result of political opposition, lobbying by interest groups, and court decisions that protect political donations as a form of free speech.
During the full two-year cycle ahead of the 2016 election, Clinton’s presidential campaign raised more than $600 million, compared with Trump’s $400 million, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. However, their fundraising efforts were more closely matched during the general election period. While Trump was able to raise more than half of his campaign contributions in the form of donations of $200 or less, outperforming Clinton in that respect, major donors provide an enormous share of U.S. campaign contributions that has grown over time. Fewer than 25,000 individuals reportedly supplied some 40 percent of all contributions in 2016, and a far smaller number of extremely wealthy and prolific donors are especially sought after by candidates, raising concerns about undue influence.
Jayden Carter
In an unusual move, President Trump filed the initial documents for a 2020 reelection bid on the day of his inauguration in January 2017, and proceeded to raise funds and hold campaign events throughout the year.
B4. Do various segments of the population (including ethnic, religious, gender, LGBT, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities? 3 / 4
A number of important laws are designed to ensure the political rights of racial and ethnic minorities. However, in 2013 the Supreme Court invalidated portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a measure adopted to deal with racial discrimination in voting procedures. As a result, certain states that previously had to submit legal changes for preclearance by federal authorities were able to adopt election laws without prior review. A number of states, including some that were never subject to the preclearance rule, have enacted laws that require voters to present specific forms of identification, rolled back innovations like early voting that contributed to higher rates of minority participation, or altered polling locations in ways that could disproportionately harm minority voters. Some of these state laws have been struck down by federal courts, but 14 states had new restrictive voting laws in place for the 2016 elections—the first presidential vote since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling.
