Democracy and Voting Rights

Democracy 360

Protecting Freedom, Protecting Rights, Protecting Democracy Nation-by-Nation

The Oath and the Office

https://www.amazon.com/Oath-Office-Constitution-Future-Presidents/dp/0393652122/

Can the president launch a nuclear attack without congressional approval? Is it ever a crime to criticize the president? Can states legally resist a president’s executive order? In today’s fraught political climate, it often seems as if we must become constitutional law scholars just to understand the news from Washington, let alone make a responsible decision at the polls.

The Oath and the Office is the book we need, right now and into the future, whether we are voting for or running to become president of the United States. Constitutional law scholar and political science professor Corey Brettschneider guides us through the Constitution and explains the powers―and limits―that it places on the presidency. From the document itself and from American history’s most famous court cases, we learn why certain powers were granted to the presidency, how the Bill of Rights limits those powers, and what “we the people” can do to influence the nation’s highest public office―including, if need be, removing the person in it. In these brief yet deeply researched chapters, we meet founding fathers such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, as well as key figures from historic cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and Korematsu v. United States.

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Time to Remember: "An Oath"

“I…do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

December 5, 2022

'Thought for the Day' by Steve Clemons

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That is the beginning of the oath new members of the Senate and the House will be asked to take on January 3, but will they? Donald Trump said over the weekend that we should suspend the Constitution to illegally reinstall himself as president. We’ll find out where leading Republican voices stand this week, who will get another round of questions about whether his latest behavior is disqualifying.

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November 2021

Report: Democracy backsliding across the world amid pandemic

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Democracy is deteriorating across the world, with countries notably taking undemocratic and unnecessary actions to contain the coronavirus pandemic, an intergovernmental body said in its new report Monday.

“Many democratic governments are backsliding," the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, or International IDEA, said.

The 34-nation organization added that as of August 2021, 64% of countries have taken an action to curb the pandemic that it considers “disproportionate, unnecessary or illegal."

The Swedish-based body added that the situation is also getting worse in countries that are not democratic. Autocratic regimes have become “even more brazen in their repression,” free speech has been restricted and the rule of law has been weakened, it said.

In its flagship report on the state of democracy, International IDEA said the number of backsliding democracies has doubled in the past decade...

The report comes ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Dec. 9-10 virtual “summit for democracy” aimed at gathering government, civil society and private sector leaders in what Biden has cast as a global faceoff against rising autocratic forces.

Global State of Democracy Report 2021

Building Resilience in a Pandemic Era

https://www.idea.int/gsod/global-report

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/report-democracy-backsliding-across-the-world-amid-pandemic/ar-AAQZjXy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding

Stockholm — The United States has joined an annual list of "backsliding" democracies for the first time, the International IDEA think-tank said on Monday, pointing to a "visible deterioration" that it said began in 2019. Globally, more than one in four people live in a backsliding democracy, a proportion that rises to more than two in three with the addition of authoritarian or "hybrid" regimes, according to the Stockholm-based International for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.