Democracies very bad year

 

Voters wait in a long line to cast their ballots at Church of the Servant in Oklahoma City on 3 November 2020. A sign of a healthy democracy or the opposite? Photograph: Nick Oxford/Reuters

Thanks to Agent Orange, and significant others, (W, the repugs, the Real Owners) the US has dropped big time in terms of being a viable democracy over the past 10+ years.

The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group.

The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its ranking of 94 a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia. It lagged far behind countries like the United Kingdom (93), Chile (93), Costa Rica (91) and Slovakia (90).

This decline is reinforced in Democracy Matrix whereby the US ranks 26th and in the Democracy index, the number's 25.