More Than 100 Scholars Issue Dire Warning for Democracy in America: ‘Our Entire Democracy Is Now At Risk’

(Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP) (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)

More than 100 self-described scholars of democracy issued a “Statement of Concern” warning that democracy in the United States is in peril. “Specifically,” the statement reads, “We have watched with deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures in response to unproven and intentionally destructive allegations of a stolen election.”

The statement says that these changes “are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.”

Since the 2020 election and Donald Trump’s repeated false claims about the election being stolen from him, hundreds of bills to restrict voting have been introduced across the country, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

According to one report, 22 laws designed to restrict voting have been enacted across 14 states since the election. The scholars’ statement took several states to task for considering and in some cases implementing such measures:

The refusal of prominent Republicans to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, and the anti-democratic laws adopted (or approaching adoption) in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Montana and Texas—and under serious consideration in other Republican-controlled states—violate these principles. More profoundly, these actions call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy. As scholars of democracy, we condemn these actions in the strongest possible terms as a betrayal of our precious democratic heritage.

The signers recommended federal legislation “to protect equal access of all citizens to the ballot and to guarantee free and fair elections,” and called the passing of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act “essential” but “not enough.” They advocate imposing national election standards that would guarantee all Americans an equal chance to vote, while also calling for laws preventing state legislatures from manipulating their states’ laws in order to achieve the election outcome they want.

The statement concludes,

We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary—including suspending the filibuster—in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do at this moment.

Notable signers of the statement include political scientists Morris Fiorina, Francis Fukuyama, Larry Sabato, and Anne-Marie Slaughter.

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