The Only Game in Town
How Elections Won The World
Voters in Donetsk, Ukraine wait in line to play.
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Three ballotball players competing in the American election.
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August 19, 2015 - Voting has been around for at least as long as this epic contest in ancient Greece, but our modern concept of choosing a government through elections is a fairly new occurrence. Even more astonishingly, this concept has swept the globe so fast that it has become the only game in town in just a little over a century.
At the dawn of the 20th century, exactly 0 countries allowed all their adult citizens to vote. By the time the 21st century rolled around, that number was 119. If you don’t trouble yourself with exactly who gets to vote, or whether or not the election is free or fair, the number of countries that hold elections skyrockets to nearly 100% of the planet.
There are only a few countries that don’t play ballotball (think of them as the kind of people that go to the mall on Super Bowl Sunday). Brunei and Vatican City don’t vote at all (unless you count the conclave), while a handful of failed states that are waiting for stability before holding elections. But these are exceptions, not the rule—almost every human on earth lives in a country where voting is the sport of kings.
So, how did it get this way? Well, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) helped. Signatories agreed “periodic and genuine elections shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot or by equivalent free voting procedures.” At first, the Communist nations didn’t sign the UNDHR, but once the USSR broke up (probably because of this), the UNDHR has been adopted by nearly everyone.
However, just because everyone votes doesn’t mean that the voice of the people is always heard. After all, lots of elections are rigged, corrupt, or otherwise just plain bizarre. The United States, for instance, is the only country that holds a presidential election where the candidate who gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily win.
To help us sort out the divisions of the electoral game, Fareed Zakaria splits the world into liberal and illiberal democracies. Liberal democracies are competitive, regulated, and have widespread voter education and expansive civil rights; the illiberal democracies have none of these things. Freedom House goes one step further and divides up the voting world into quarters--the Free, Partly Free, Not Free, and Worst of the Worst. These are similar to Zakaria’s categories, just with more wiggle room in the middle.
At the dawn of the 20th century, exactly 0 countries allowed all their adult citizens to vote. By the time the 21st century rolled around, that number was 119. If you don’t trouble yourself with exactly who gets to vote, or whether or not the election is free or fair, the number of countries that hold elections skyrockets to nearly 100% of the planet.
There are only a few countries that don’t play ballotball (think of them as the kind of people that go to the mall on Super Bowl Sunday). Brunei and Vatican City don’t vote at all (unless you count the conclave), while a handful of failed states that are waiting for stability before holding elections. But these are exceptions, not the rule—almost every human on earth lives in a country where voting is the sport of kings.
So, how did it get this way? Well, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) helped. Signatories agreed “periodic and genuine elections shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot or by equivalent free voting procedures.” At first, the Communist nations didn’t sign the UNDHR, but once the USSR broke up (probably because of this), the UNDHR has been adopted by nearly everyone.
However, just because everyone votes doesn’t mean that the voice of the people is always heard. After all, lots of elections are rigged, corrupt, or otherwise just plain bizarre. The United States, for instance, is the only country that holds a presidential election where the candidate who gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily win.
To help us sort out the divisions of the electoral game, Fareed Zakaria splits the world into liberal and illiberal democracies. Liberal democracies are competitive, regulated, and have widespread voter education and expansive civil rights; the illiberal democracies have none of these things. Freedom House goes one step further and divides up the voting world into quarters--the Free, Partly Free, Not Free, and Worst of the Worst. These are similar to Zakaria’s categories, just with more wiggle room in the middle.
Freedom House map of Free(green), Partly Free(Yellow), and Not Free countries(Purple)
Now that we live in a world that votes in two or three levels of competition, what’s next? Will every nation eventually work their way up the ladder and enter the Free league or will some get relegated and end up in the Not Free league? This is another part of ballotball that is changing rapidly—it took just 2 years for the United Nations to go from saying “the UN does not monitor internal elections in a country,” to establishing the Electoral Assistance Division, which does just that. The UNEAD has since been instrumental in improving and monitoring over 300 elections.
Are we looking at the world through rose-colored glasses? A dictator who connives to win an election contaminates the game worse than the domestic violence problem contaminates our ability to enjoy watching an NFL game. Moreover, holding elections for their own sake can prove deadly—Nigeria was widely criticized for spending too much money on the 1962 election at the expense of public health spending. This debacle wound up leading to a revolution. Problems with voting go back decades. Look no further than the depression ravaged German Weimar Republic in the 1930s. Despite having one of the most liberal democracies in Europe, they still managed to elect a failed Austrian artist who wound up waging war on the world.
John Locke may have been right when he said, “If people have the right to rebel and force democratic elections, they have the right not to as well.” Nevertheless, we at Ballotball.com remain rabid electoral enthusiasts. Ballotball may have warts like all sports (e.g., cheating, health concerns, and discipline problems) but it is still a game worth playing. There have been great strides in its evolution, and a combination of civic participation, civil rights, and international cooperation will hopefully continue to grow this beautiful game.
Are we looking at the world through rose-colored glasses? A dictator who connives to win an election contaminates the game worse than the domestic violence problem contaminates our ability to enjoy watching an NFL game. Moreover, holding elections for their own sake can prove deadly—Nigeria was widely criticized for spending too much money on the 1962 election at the expense of public health spending. This debacle wound up leading to a revolution. Problems with voting go back decades. Look no further than the depression ravaged German Weimar Republic in the 1930s. Despite having one of the most liberal democracies in Europe, they still managed to elect a failed Austrian artist who wound up waging war on the world.
John Locke may have been right when he said, “If people have the right to rebel and force democratic elections, they have the right not to as well.” Nevertheless, we at Ballotball.com remain rabid electoral enthusiasts. Ballotball may have warts like all sports (e.g., cheating, health concerns, and discipline problems) but it is still a game worth playing. There have been great strides in its evolution, and a combination of civic participation, civil rights, and international cooperation will hopefully continue to grow this beautiful game.