This July 4th, we face a new struggle for democracy

In December of 2016, Andrew Reynolds, then a University of North Carolina politics professor, caused a stir with his op-ed in The News & Observer headlined: “North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy.”

Citing international measures of democratic vitality, Reynolds said North Carolina was failing in how it drew its election districts and in how state lawmakers tried to limit access to the vote and exploited a slight advantage in statewide votes to wield autocratic power.

Reynolds, who assesses democracies worldwide, wrote: “If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly free democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.”

Five years later, that verdict still stings, maybe even more so. For as the nation celebrates the gaining of its independence, there are rising worries that it is losing its democracy.

This July 4th comes in a year when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to overturn a presidential election. It comes as former President Donald Trump continues to lie about the election’s outcome and encourage doubts about the integrity of the election process. It comes just days after the Supreme Court voted 6-3 in an Arizona case to further limit the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. League of Women Voters said in a statement, “The Court’s ruling today is a devastating blow to our democracy and will clear the way for states to pass discriminatory laws, put up barriers to voting, and chase problems that do not exist.”

And that process is well underway. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that so far this year 14 states have enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote. More restrictions could yet be approved.

In North Carolina, the 2020 presidential election drew a record-high turnout of more than 75 percent of registered voters with virtually no problems despite the challenges of voting during a pandemic. Nonetheless, the Republican-led legislature is moving to end the three-day grace period for counting mail-in votes that are postmarked by Election Day, but arrive afterward. Republican lawmakers also want to restrict the election oversight powers of the state attorney general and the State Board of Elections. Meanwhile, Republicans continue to push in court for approval of a photo ID requirement for voting.

Reynolds, now a senior research scholar at Princeton, told the Editorial Board last week that democracy in North Carolina and the U.S. remains at risk. In 2016, he said, “I was making the point that the system wasn’t reflecting the will of the people. Five years later, the system has not improved. In fact, it’s getting worse.”

Yet despite Reynolds’ grim assessment, North Carolina and the U.S. are still democracies. The record voter turnout in 2020 and the push for election law reform in Congress testify to that. And even as some states narrow access to the vote, more than a dozen states are expanding it. Claims of election fraud have been found groundless by the courts and Trump’s push to overturn the election has failed.

In North Carolina, a Democratic governor can successfully veto Republican bills that unnecessarily restrict voting or add partisanship to election supervision. Voting rights groups led by Common Cause have won a landmark court battle to make partisan gerrymandering illegal in North Carolina.

Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, said of those who would hinder democracy to hold onto their power, “There’s going to be a ferocious battle if they try anything that is going to damage the integrity of elections or make voting harder.”

In that prediction is the enduring meaning of Independence Day. It is not only about a war for democratic freedom fought and won, but a reminder that once attained that victory must be sustained with fresh resolve by every generation of Americans.