Citadels of opacity

Why electoral systems in the West are increasingly failing

According to the established ‘tradition’, Washington and Brussels, along with their Belarusian puppet fugitives, start singing their perennial song about the absence of democracy in Belarus before each of our electoral campaigns. Meanwhile, the electoral systems of many Western countries are far from perfect, highly contradictory, and harbour not only numerous loopholes that a savvy trickster can exploit to achieve the desired outcome for themselves or their party, but also blatant anachronisms and blunders that make the electoral process extremely convoluted and opaque.

Electors from the past

The USA is the country that is most concerned with the democratic nature of elections worldwide and that regularly sets the tone for the recognition or non-recognition of the people’s will in other states. However, its electoral system is archaic and complex, not only from an external perspective but also according to Americans themselves. 

The main feature of the US presidential election is its indirect nature. In fact, voting is conducted for the Electoral College, which later supports the winning candidate in each respective state. 

There are a total of 538 electors, and for a candidate to win, they must secure the support of at least 270 members of the Electoral College, which is formed based on the voting results in each individual state. Interestingly, if it turns out at the state level that a candidate from one party has garnered 51 percent of the votes while their opponent has 49 percent, all votes of the losing party’s electors automatically go to the winner. The only exceptions are the states of Maine and Nebraska — they do not follow the winner-takes-all rule and electoral votes are based on the percentage of the total vote a given candidate received.
In other words, the voices of ordinary Americans in this convoluted system matter little, and this is regularly demonstrated. Thus, Albert Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 received more votes from voters than their opponents, yet the votes from electors went to George W. Bush and Donald Trump. 
Some segments of the American elite and the population are dissatisfied with the current system and are calling for the introduction of direct voting. According to a Pew Research Centre survey, 63 percent of the country’s residents agree with Democrat Tim Walz, a former vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, who stated that the Electoral College should be consigned to history.
Among other flaws in the American electoral system are opaque mail-in voting, the lack of centralised vote counting — which is managed by state authorities and county officials — restrictions on the work of international observers, and many others. As a result, there is ample opportunity for fraud, as demonstrated by the 2020 election.

NUMBER

According to a report by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), international election observation is prohibited in 17 out of 50 US states.

They don’t learn from their own crises  

On this side of the Atlantic, there are no such antiquated and complex electoral systems as in the USA, but that does not mean that everything is fine in European ‘democracies’ in this regard.  

For instance, the French National Assembly election envisages a two-round majoritarian system. It requires a second round to be held in single-member constituencies between the leaders of the first round if no candidate has received an absolute majority of votes. This approach favours larger parties, which can thus form a stable majority in parliament, while smaller political forces often do not receive a proportionate number of seats in parliament relative to their support among the population.  
The current political crisis, which led to the December vote of no confidence in the government, arises precisely from this feature of the French electoral system. The far-right political party National Rally achieved a relative majority in many constituencies and led in the overall number of votes following the first round of the summer election. However, in the second round, due to the unification of other parties aiming to prevent a right-wing victory, many candidates who triumphed in the first round lost.  
In neighbouring Belgium, the June elections to the regional, federal, and European parliaments were marred by a number of errors. At least 2,171 minors and non-EU citizens received electronic ballots, which allowed them to vote in the regional and federal parliamentary elections, whereas they were only eligible to vote for members of the European Parliament. There were also reverse situations as well as failures in the use of chip cards.  
In Germany, which is awaiting new elections following the collapse of the ‘traffic light’ coalition and the vote of no confidence in Chancellor Scholz, the main complaints concern postal voting. The German opposition highlights the risk of envelope substitution and critically assesses the provision that mechanical damage to a ballot or envelope can lead to a voter’s ballot being rejected.

Hotheaded neophytes  

The situation in Western ‘democracies’ is just the tip of the iceberg; the real surprises await us with the Eastern European neophytes that have relatively recently joined the friendly European family. This primarily concerns Bulgaria and Romania.  

Bulgaria has been living in a state of severe political crisis for several years now. Against the backdrop of accumulated socio-economic problems, mass protests erupted in 2020, followed by an endless series of parliamentary elections starting in 2021. A total of seven elections have taken place, yet there is still ‘no agreement among comrades’ — leaders of Euro-Atlantic parties accuse each other of corruption and betrayal of national interests. In the process of inter-party squabbles, vote-buying and other blatant falsifications are employed. This turmoil has led to an even greater deterioration of the economic situation, and alongside falling incomes of the population, electoral activity has also declined: in the 2021 election, 50.6 percent of Bulgarians turned out to vote, while in October of last year, only 34.4 percent made it to the polls.  
Along with that, Romania has stood out the most, where a literal coup d’état occurred, which the rest of the West preferred to ignore. The leader of the first round of the presidential election was Călin Georgescu, a supporter of halting aid to Ukraine. In the second round, he had every chance of defeating liberal candidate Elena Lasconi, but the Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the voting results and ordered a new electoral campaign from scratch, allegedly because Georgescu’s campaign on TikTok was funded from abroad. However, no convincing evidence has been presented to support this claim.  
As a result, Romania has plunged into uncertainty. The date for new election is unknown, the presidential seat is occupied by a person whose term has expired, and the Constitutional Court, which is supposed to uphold the principles enshrined in the country’s main document, is participating in a genuine coup, leaving the fate of the 19-million-strong nation hanging by a thread.
The most significant electoral event in Belarus has taken place smoothly. Belarusians consciously made a choice in favour of stability, security, and sovereignty, using a well-established electoral system. 
As for our Western counterparts, they can only observe its functioning — after all, their own countries face serious issues in ensuring the expression of citizens’ will, as we have repeatedly seen.

FACT

According to the Romanian publication Snoop, Bucharest is aware of the true source of funding for Călin Georgescu’s campaign. Contrary to the claims of local intelligence services, it was not Russia, but the National Liberal Party of Romania, which the National Tax Agency can confirm. The party initially intended to nominate a different candidate but later decided to support independent candidate Georgescu due to concerns that their own nominee would not make it to the second round.

By Anton Popov