US media continue to warn against elections

American media operatives are warning that elections are a threat to “democracy.”

“2024 Is the Year of Elections and That’s a Threat to Democracy,” wrote Bloomberg Senior Editor Tobin Harshaw last week. The former New York Times op-ed deputy editor expressed concern that this year’s presidential election will be a repeat of the one in 2016, which he claimed was conspired by Donald Trump and the Kremlin.

But Harshaw is not only concerned about US elections. The columnist is troubled that people around the world are able to vote.

“41% of the world’s population is having major elections this year. Yay democracy! Right? Not really, what with extremist populist parties — mostly right-wing — on the rise everywhere from the European Union to the Pacific rim,” Harshaw wrote.

Harshaw is only one of several media operatives who take issue with elections.

On Thursday, TIME Senior Correspondent Justin Worland warned that elections are a “challenge” to “climate change” because voters are more concerned with other issues.

“[E]lections speak to the core of climate change’s democracy challenge,” Worland wrote. “Climate change, as urgent as the scientific reality may be, feels less urgent to voters than their economic challenges. And elected officials respond to that to win elections.” 

In an article this month for The Atlantic titled “Lots of People Will Vote This Year. That Doesn’t Mean Democracy Will Survive,” Brian Klaas said, “[T]here are more elections than ever before in human history, and yet the world is becoming less democratic.”

Warning that “populists are growing in popularity and power,” Klaas went on to fret that voters may “make the wrong choice” this year and thus imperil democracy.

Other mainstream news publications have gone even further and warned that free speech threatens election integrity and, therefore, democracy.

“[T]he First Amendment has become, for better or worse, a barrier to virtually any government efforts to stifle a problem that, in the case of a pandemic, threatens public health and, in the case of the integrity of elections, even democracy itself,” wrote reporter Steven Lee Myers for the New York Times last year.

The paper also lamented that “billions of people will vote in major elections around the world in 2024” without enough censorship from social media companies.