Want a Stronger Democracy? Look Abroad
Most people think of 2025 as an off year for elections. But is there really such a thing? What can we learn in our “off years”?
Most people think of 2025 as an off year for American elections.
But there are still elections this year: a handful of states will choose Governors and state and city representatives, and Florida will host two special congressional elections to replace U.S. Representatives who resigned to join the Trump administration (though one, Matt Gaetz, ultimately withdrew from consideration for U.S. Attorney General). Outside of these races, however, not many Americans will go to the polls.
And even if there weren’t any of those contests, elections still wouldn’t have an off year. In the United States, election officials are already busy planning for the 2026 midterms. State legislators are also proposing and passing legislation that will substantively change how their elections are run.
Abroad, elections are still happening in many places, as several countries will hold elections in 2025 that impact democracy. Canada, Germany, and Australia are just a few of the dozens of countries that have national elections this year. In fact, Germany just held their race, in which turnout was about 84 percent—a staggering number when considering that last November only about 64 percent of eligible Americans cast a ballot. Perhaps there’s something to learn from Germany’s strong turnout.
What else can we learn from how other countries approach their elections?
I recently interviewed international elections expert Fernanda Buril for the Democracy Optimist podcast to answer that question. Buril is the Deputy Director of the Center for Applied Research and Learning at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). As part of her role at IFES, Buril works with partner organizations and election commissions in dozens of countries. Essentially, she is an expert on sustaining democracy around the world.
To start, Buril explained why we should care about elections in other countries. The media often frames political issues in an American context, leaving aside international politics and perspectives. Buril, however, noted that supporting and sustaining democracy in other countries is vital to worldwide peace. Democratic countries are less likely to go to war with one another and are more likely to enter alliances with the United States. We also learn from the challenges that other countries face. Much like the U.S., other countries grapple with mis- and disinformation, false allegations of fraud and election misconduct, and data breaches by hostile actors. These problems call for holistic solutions.
The U.S. can also learn from how other countries run their elections. Most countries, Buril pointed out, have a centralized election system, where a national, non-partisan professional body administers elections. By contrast, the United States has an extremely decentralized process, as U.S. states and localities control all aspects of election administration. There is no central American election administrator—though the U.S. Election Assistance Commission does offer help to states—and many election officials are chosen through partisan elections. These facts surprise most international observers.
Given the variety of approaches, I asked Buril about common strategies any democracy can use to prevent election violence and controversy. She said that the most important consideration for officials is to mitigate risk. Though there are some risk factors that election authorities can’t change—such as extremely close elections—there are many potential issues that officials can control. People are more likely to trust an election and recognize its legitimacy if it is well-administered. Prompt delivery of election results and the existence of a fair system for contesting results are important measures to improve election trust and thereby sustain democracy. Overall, Buril said that the primary goal for officials should be to minimize uncertainty.
Buril’s work often has her looking at what “goes wrong” in democratic elections. There are many examples. Last year, under the increasingly autocratic Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela held an election that experts widely denounced as lacking transparency. Similarly, election officials in Romania annulled the country’s presidential election results, citing organized misinformation and campaign finance irregularities. I asked Buril whether she is optimistic about democracy in the face of setbacks like these. Her answer? Yes. She pointed out the positive trend of opposition parties winning many of 2024’s elections to back up her optimism. Ruling parties only won about half of the roughly 80 elections held last year, showing that opposition voices still have a say in many places and that ruling parties are not systematically suppressing dissent. Though this trend does not prove that democracy is perfect in every country with an election, Buril pointed out that the results show the citizens of many countries still can have their voices heard both freely and fairly.
The work to create a stronger democracy never ends. To be sure, we are facing unprecedented threats to democracy in the U.S. However, we have experiences from other countries—high turnout, nonpartisan election administrators, a more centralized process—that offer ideas to consider as we face today’s challenges. If we are to take anything from Fernanda Buril’s expertise, it’s that the measurable progress in other countries gives us a map for how to face our current challenges in the U.S. head-on.