The World’s Election

While 2024 is the global Year of Elections, there is only one truly global election taking place this year. In 2024, more than half the world's population across 77 countries was eligible to go to the polls, though in some cases the voting was for sham elections like in Russia. But even more people than that are going to the polls this year in the U.S. Presidential election, not literally but figuratively, with their hearts and minds. As the two Presidential campaigns scramble to reach the very few remaining Americans whose votes are up for grabs, billions of people across literally every country in the world are paying close attention.

In a recent swing through Singapore, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Australia, across dozens and dozens of meetings with government officials, members of civil society, and diplomats, the conversation inevitably turned to the U.S. elections. This is hardly a new phenomenon. People around the world have been closely following the U.S. presidential campaign for months. The level of interest of people I met in a multi-country visit to Europe in February was as high as it was in Asia in October. At the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September, the two topics at the global gathering that dominated the hallway conversations were the war in Gaza and Lebanon, and the U.S. Presidential election.

People inevitably ask, "Who is going to win?" Many are as anxious and stressed-out by the American elections as most of America is. Fundamentally though, what they are most interested in, is understanding what the American election results will mean for them.

They know the outcome will have an impact, one way or another, on them and on their communities. While the world is very different today than it was in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, the United States is still the world's only super-power. When America's democracy is jolted, people on the other side of the world shake.

After the end of the Cold War, the American democratic and electoral systems were held up as models, often as eagerly imported as exported. In 2024, there is broad recognition at home and abroad that, while the U.S. models have many strengths, they are not without their weaknesses, some of which are uniquely American.

That explains why questions about the likely outcome are often paired with surprisingly well-informed questions about swing states, court cases, polling, voter turn-out, and campaign messaging. Many foreigners know more about the U.S. election system than many Americans. But even the most well-informed foreigners I know generally have a hard time understanding the logic of the electoral college that has five times resulted in a President who lost the popular vote. They also struggle to understand how the votes of citizens of Kentucky or New York seem to hardly matter at all.

In some countries - like Indonesia, where the newly inaugurated President won the most votes of any single candidate in the history of the world, and election results are known the day of elections - people are puzzled that in the United States it can take days or even weeks to know the outcome of a Presidential election.

The U.S. is also unique in that it is one of the only countries in the world that does not have a central authority responsible for the conduct of elections across the entire country (many see this as a strength of the U.S. system, arguing that the dispersed model makes it harder to rig an election).

For those involved in the democracy strengthening and electoral integrity business, we know there is not one perfect model, that each election system around the world has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. It is heartening to see efforts at local, state and federal levels to further strengthen the U.S. system.

Those efforts could be strengthened by looking at how other countries have adapted to meet our shared challenges. Election officials in North Carolina face unprecedented challenges this year managing polling places in areas devastated by Hurricane Helene. Their counterparts in India, who have long contended with facilitating elections in areas affected by floods and natural disasters, may have experiences that we could learn from here. Countries from Australia to Estonia have found innovative ways to engage their publics and fight for information integrity around elections.

The International Foundation for Electoral Systems will be bringing more than 500 election administrators, electoral judges, and related officials to the United States at the time of our Presidential elections to learn more about the intricacies of American elections from technical experts, academics, and voices from the Democrat and Republican parties. We hope that our international visitors will be able to use their in-depth exposure to the U.S. election system to help strengthen election integrity in their own country. The U.S. model still has much to offer.

Other models also have lessons to offer the United States, though. We take pride in our democratic traditions, and people around the world still look to the United States for hope and for leadership. But democracy in any country is always a work in progress. As we in America work to improve our own democratic processes, we would do well to look to the examples that the rest of the world has to offer us.