A Journey Through Democracy and Election Practices Around the World

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This content is brought to you by Travelers. Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute. A Series on Civic Engagement.

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A Journey Through Democracy and Election Practices Around the World. Logos. Citizen Travelers. UConn Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, Dodd Impact. Microsoft. Janice Brunner appears on a video call.

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JANICE BRUNNER: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. I'm Janice Brunner, Group General Counsel and Head of Civic Engagement for Travelers. And I'm happy to welcome you to our special Citizen Travelers at the Travelers Institute Program this afternoon. Citizen Travelers is our aggressively nonpartisan initiative to empower Travelers employees to take part in the civic life of their communities while building leadership and professional skills.

Underpinning all the work that we do every day is the core belief that our democracy depends on informed and engaged citizens. When people better understand how our democracy works, they're better equipped to engage in constructive dialogue and action. This kind of constructive engagement tightens community bonds, fosters innovation and growth and enables people from all walks of life to invest in their lives and livelihoods, all of which is good for business.

It's with this in mind that we're pleased to host another conversation in our series of programs examining civic engagement. Before we begin, I'd like to share a disclaimer about today's program.

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Text: About Today's Webinar - This webinar is supported by Citizen Travelers, the civic engagement initiative of The Travelers Indemnity Co., for informational and educational purposes only. The non-partisan views expressed by the speakers and or University of Connecticut and Microsoft and its employees are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Travelers or any of its employees. Travelers disclaims responsibility for any publication or statement by any of the speakers and or University of Connecticut and Microsoft. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate.

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I'd also like you-- to invite you to submit questions now and throughout the program. Drop your questions in the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen.

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Text: Speakers. Pictures, names, and titles of three people. Text: Janice Brunner, Group General Counsel and Head of Civic Engagement, Travelers. Dr. James Waller, Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice, University of Connecticut. Dave Leichtman, Director of Corporate Civic Responsibility, Microsoft.

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With that, I'm thrilled to be joined today by our amazing guests. Dr. James Waller is the inaugural Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice at the University of Connecticut. At UConn, he also directs the Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs for the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute and is a professor of literatures, cultures, languages and human rights.

Dr. Waller has authored seven books, most notably his award-winning Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. In 2017, Waller was the inaugural recipient of the Engaged Scholarship Prize from the International Association of Genocide Scholars in recognition of his exemplary engagement in advancing genocide awareness and prevention.

Dave Leichtman is the Director of Corporate Civic Responsibility at Microsoft. As part of the company's Democracy Forward program, he leads nonpartisan civic engagement efforts and works with election officials and those upholding democracy worldwide to address tech, security and AI needs.

Dave also leads the company's internal U.S. and international election strategy. Dave holds a B.S. in physics and computer science from William & Mary, and an M.S. in particle physics from University of Washington. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.

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The two men join the video call.

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James and Dave, thank you so much for being here with us today. We spend a lot of time focusing on democracy here at home. And as we head into the 250th anniversary in the coming year, we'll have even more opportunities to explore that topic.

But today, we're taking a look at democracy outside the U.S., to better understand the current global landscape and how it impacts the world we live in. James, let's start with you. What's the definition of democracy in the broadest sense? And what core values make democratic systems distinct from others?

JAMES WALLER: Thanks, Janice, and thanks to everyone for being here. This first question is an important one of, what is democracy? What are the core features of it? Every democracy is different. In at least some small ways, in some nuanced ways, democracies differ from each other. But broadly speaking, I think there are five core characteristics we look at when we define a system of governance as democratic.

One is that it's functioning on the basis of popular sovereignty. This just simply means that the government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, and that there are periodic opportunities through free and fair elections, where the governed can choose to continue on with the government they've elected or choose to dismiss that government. So popular sovereignty is a big core value.

A second one is rule of law, which simply means that law is fairly and consistently enforced by independent courts. And that word independent is really important when we talk about the rule of law. A third characteristic of democracies is freedom of speech and association. This is freedom of speech and the right of assembly in university settings, cultural settings, K through 12 settings, and perhaps most importantly, in a free and pluralistic media as well.

I think, fourthly, democracies have some sense of accountability and transparency in how governance is done and how public administration is done. And fifthly and finally-- and this is most important to us at the Dodd Center for Human Rights-- is democracy has-- they have a respect for human rights.

Particularly, democracies are very committed to ensuring the rights of the most vulnerable people in the population, typically minority populations within a larger population. So I think, Janice, some-- all democracies will have some combination of those five core principles of popular sovereignty, rule of law, freedom of speech and expression, accountability and transparency, and respect for human rights.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. That's a very clear and concise definition. So that's super helpful to set the stage for our discussion today. In an interview that you did a couple of years ago, you observed that democracy is not self-sustaining. It's not automatic. And what are the most significant challenges that you think are facing democracy worldwide today?

JAMES WALLER: Yeah. When I said that democracy is not self-sustaining, not automatic, that simply means that, when we don't tend to democracy, when we don't tend to democratic institutions, we can't expect them to just live forever on their own. They take nurturing. They take tending to. They take attention. So they're not self-sustaining.

It's something we have to attend to constantly are those democratic institutions that are a foundation of democracies can start to erode. I think this is particularly important for us, Janice, because you mentioned today's conversation is really looking at this globally. Today, democracy is at its lowest global level in over 50 years. Hard to believe, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when we thought democracy had won, that now we're looking, and in the past 50 years, we've never seen democracy in retreat like it's in retreat now.

The world has fewer democracies today, only 88, than we have autocracies. We have 92 autocracies in the world. So what that means is that most people in the world-- and the actual figure is 72%-- 72% of people in the world live in a country that's not a democracy. So for those of us who live and work in a democratic country, now, we actually make up the minority of the population.

And I think what's important to recognize about these challenges to democracy is that most democracies are not being overthrown by bloody coups. It's not these type of revolutions that used to push one government out and bring another one in. But democracies are dying by a thousand cuts of constitutional threats and constitutional death to them.

So it really is like you're reading a book as twilight starts to descend, and your eyes adjust, and your eyes adjust as it gets darker and darker and darker. You can still read, but at some point, it's so dark that you just can't read any longer. And this is how we see democracies dying today.

And backsliding is just step by step by step. Nothing seems too threatening until the day comes where you realize, I'm not sure I can say I any longer live in a democracy. And again, 72% of the world's population are experiencing that today.

JANICE BRUNNER: Wow. That's staggering and I think something that maybe people weren't aware of before this call. Can you give some examples, if you can, or that I think just illustrate that point and what's going on in the world stage?

JAMES WALLER: Yeah. I think, what we've seen is, in terms of this democratic decline, as I said, these have just been slow, incremental, progressive issues that, if we look generally, what many countries have struggled with in terms of democratic erosion is how they deal with immigration. Or essentially-- and this is important for us in our communities as well-- how do we deal with the person that we define as the other.

Someone different from us because of religion, race, ethnicity, nationality or whatever, how do we deal with the other? And in democracies, we have a commitment to deal constructively with people who are different from us, to find ways to be inclusive. But it means it's hard work.

And in truth, honestly, Janice, I think many countries are realizing autocracies are just easier. But they're easier shortcuts with significant cost. And the cost are the lack of democratic voice, the lack of freedom of expression, the lack of inclusion. Those aren't cost we generally want to accept, but unfortunately, country after country is starting to move in that direction.

JANICE BRUNNER: Interesting. What successful democratic institutions or practices have you observed that contribute to society resilience and stability, in addition to what you just said about immigration? What other practices, free speech or--

JAMES WALLER: Yeah.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah.

JAMES WALLER: No, I appreciate the question. I tend to be kind of a glass is half empty guy, and I'm always looking for the threats and challenges. But in truth, we have a ton to learn from the success stories. And I'm thinking particularly of three countries that, four years ago, I would have said were absolutely sliding from democracy to autocracy. Those are Brazil, Poland and Thailand.

Today, all three of those countries have made a U-turn back toward democracy. It's slow. It's hard to do, but they're absolutely turning back toward democracy. Other countries like Chechnya, Malaysia, Guatemala are also starting to make that U-turn. So this is not a situation where, once you start to slide to autocracy, there's no coming back. There is coming back.

And when we look particularly at Brazil, Poland and Thailand and ask the question, How have they turned the tide back toward a pro-democracy country? I think there have been three characteristics they share. One is they've had an increased freedom of expression. So media, cultural institutions, academic institutions have been able to reclaim a voice that had slowly been eroded and taken away.

I think, secondly, all three of those countries have been very intentional about establishing-- re-establishing-- the rule of law, so that they have this horizontal accountability where there are checks and balances, where the rule of law can check and balance executive oversight. And then thirdly, in all three of those countries' cases, they had strong executive leaders for a period of time that did what they wanted to do without any regard for other legislators.

But in each of those three countries, they've taken strong steps to have the legislator regain oversight of the executive office. So, I think those three things are important, realizing freedom of expression, how important it is, how important rule of law is, and how important it is that we have a broad legislative oversight over executive power and executive authority. And when we do those things, we can see countries, like Brazil, Poland and Thailand, that were absolutely backsliding in terms of democratic institutions, they really have turned this ship around here in the past couple of years.

JANICE BRUNNER: Super interesting. And what's the role of elections in that? And Dave, I know elections are really your area of expertise, so feel free to weigh in as well. But has it been the case where there was an election that changed the composition of a-- that gave the legislature more of an interest in making those changes?

Or was it that the judicial branch really kind of stepped up in the way that the checks and balances are intended? Or what did you-- kind of was there a particular thing that kind of turned that ship, so to speak?

JAMES WALLER: Yeah, I can just say real quickly, because as you said, electioneering is really Dave's expertise and not mine. But civil society in the three countries I mentioned, Brazil, Poland and Thailand, civil society was crucial in those. People standing up and saying, the judiciary has to step up, the legislature has to step up, and yes, elections were absolutely part of that.

Civil society being able to have a voice through representatives that they elected to be in government and those type of-- I've done election monitoring a couple of times over the years, and that's just crucial to have these type of free, fair elections. That's what popular sovereignty is built on. And it's difficult to do. And not all countries pull it off as successfully, as I'm sure Dave knows.

And I'll close with this example. I was monitoring the election in a country I won't name. It was probably 10 or 12 years ago, and the country, the government was so excited because they had such a remarkable turnout at the polls. And they said, you can't believe it, Jim. We had 115% turnout at the polls.

And we had to explain, that's not really a good thing when you have more than 100% turnout. But at least they had the enthusiasm for recognizing how important it was to get people out, but maybe not the mechanics for making sure that it was one person, one vote.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah. That's-- well, that's quite a statistic. Right? And that's a perfect segue to Dave. Tell us a little bit more about your role at Microsoft and particularly with respect to elections and where that's taken you and certainly interesting starting from a civic-- or a physics background.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: I always tell people when they ask me about that, life is weird.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yes.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: So, Dave Leichtman, I'm, as you introduced before, Director of Corporate Civic Responsibility. I cover two things for the company, which is global elections and civic engagement. And in that respect, for those who know Janice and her work, Janice and I are peers. And we do much of the same work around civic engagement internally.

The other half of my job takes me all around the world, working with democratic governments on protecting and enhancing security and integrity of elections and helping elections officials utilize new technologies in their work, things like that, and also to reduce harms in their work. So, people have talked a lot about AI lately and the promise and peril. And so we can talk about that later. But that's basically what I do.

You can think of, if you're an elections official worldwide, you've probably got my cell phone number in case you need an in to Microsoft. And look, it's taken me a lot of crazy places, and James, I know you've monitored. I've monitored.

Some people do it well. Some people do it right. Some people do it astonishingly poorly around the world. But I think there's an interesting thread in all of that is that, in the U.S., we have taken elections so for granted here.

And part of that is because we're on a fixed election cycle, where the media attention around the election has grown in length. The time between when we start paying attention to the election and when the election is just keeps getting longer and longer, to the point where one presidential election ends and then we're like, well, we only have three years and 355 days until the next election. Or yeah, however many.

And that's absurd. Because you look at Canada, who just held an election, and everybody knew an election was coming in Canada. But they had an election in five weeks, and Australia had an election in six weeks. In some sense, even the United States had an election in about three or four months last year because the Democratic Party changed their candidate at the last minute. And it kind of reset the election.

So that's all to say, we tend to think like elections are such a huge part of all of democracy and all of this, in the U.S., because we have fixed time period, and we pay so much media attention, but really, the election is not the thing. Right? And I always try and stress this. Democracy is the thing.

Trust in institutions, trust in the government, trust in that the government represents the people, that is what is the thing. Sometimes elections don't go well. In Kenya, in 2007, they had to toss an election, and it took them a year to work it out. But they had a power sharing government as a result. And in the end, that's something that people trusted to represent them and move forward as a democratic government.

So it's not always that the election is the thing. Right? And in fact, even in the U.S., we have, in the last few election cycles, maybe over indexed on certain things like security of the election, to the detriment of whether people actually believe the outcome or not, which is critical. That's the trust factor.

And that goes to so many other things. That goes to the way we talk about democracy, we talk about civics, we talk about institutions. It goes to the way that we talk about what is important in holding an election or holding that democratic participation. Because I always love holding this up. National Democratic Institute, which unfortunately might not be long for this world because of federal cuts, but their tagline is "democracy is inclusion."

And I love that tagline because it's so telling of the other things that are important. Access is important. Accessibility is important. Inclusion is important. These are all things that you can't have democracy without. And so is the security of an election important? Absolutely. It's a huge trust factor. But it's not the only thing. And it's perhaps something that we've, in the U.S. anyway, over indexed on in the last so many cycles.

JANICE BRUNNER: Interesting. And what is Microsoft-- and I think that leads well into our next question about, what is Microsoft’s view-- its role in supporting elections globally and civic engagement globally as well? Because as to your point, civic engagement is what you do, not just at the election time, but the rest of the time as well.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: Yeah. It's interesting. People always ask, why does Microsoft care about defending democracy? And it's a good question. You and I do the civic engagement work as part of the company's corporate social responsibility work, what we call CSR.

We also do our elections protection work as part of our CSR. And the reason is democracy has a unique association with business and capitalism worldwide. Now, whether you think that should be the case or not, I'm not here to pontificate on different systems of government and whatnot. But I will say that democracy is generally a favorable environment for growing a business, for entrepreneurship, for wealth of ideas.

And part of that is because democracy is predicated on rule of law and fairness in judicial systems and in regulation. And so I always use this example. When Russia invaded Ukraine in '22, Google got crosswise with the government over statements made, and Moscow kicked Google out.

Now, I know that London and D.C. can't kick Microsoft out. That is against the rule of law. We know that there are certain things that we can count on in society, and they are underpinned by democratic rule of law. So that's a good thing for our company, for our business. It's why all the most successful businesses in the world are headquartered in the U.S. It's a thriving environment for democratic capitalism, I guess, is a better way to put it.

And so we always say, democracy is good for business, so business has to be good for democracy. It's a payback. As part of our CSR work, we feel it's necessary to protect democratic institutions, not just because it helps our bottom line. But also, because it's the right thing to do and it helps our system.

JANICE BRUNNER: Couldn't agree more. I think that's the basis for our civic engagement program as well. And that it really is-- we've thrived for 160 years because of the democratic system that we live in. And it's our interest in making sure it continues and that our communities are thriving and engaged.

It's also such a good way to get out into your community and meet other people who may have different perspectives and experiences and learn skills. I think one of the things that's been really impactful about our program is realizing, when you go out and participate in a local-- you join the local council, you serve in a local role, you participate in those, in democracy at a very fundamental, local level, you start to learn things that you didn't even realize you needed to know.

And you get to meet people that you may not have met, even if they live on the next street. So that's the other key aspect of democracy and civic engagement that is-- we find so meaningful. And I think Microsoft shares that view as well.

When you're traveling-- what we're talking today about worldwide elections. And when you're traveling outside the U.S. in elections in Microsoft's role, as supporting election through software or whatever else your role might include, what are some of the things that you're doing? And what has surprised you about that work in comparison to the U.S.?

DAVE LEICHTMAN: Sure. Well, a lot of the work that we do is cybersecurity. So, I think everybody is generally familiar that voting machines in the U.S. and elsewhere are not connected to the internet. They kind of exist in their own little bubble with their own regulations. And oftentimes, when we talk cybersecurity, it's not really-- there are so many rules and regulations that go into how voting machines operate that they're, like, untouchable. Right?

And so we look at a lot of security of the systems around it. You look at websites where people find information about voting. You look at systems where people register to vote or websites where the results are reported out. Those are all very important to the process, but they're not the actual voting machine. And oftentimes those systems live in the cloud. Oftentimes, they live in our cloud, in the Microsoft cloud.

And so we have a unique role in making sure that they are secure. We have a program that we run internally called Azure for Elections, where if there is a-- Azure is our cloud service. And if there's a workload like a voter registration database, take for instance, my home state of Virginia, which runs all of its cloud election systems in Azure. We bring extra resources to the table. We bring extra security. We bring extra monitoring. We bring extra support.

And again, that gets back to those elections officials have my cell phone number. And we do that worldwide. So not just in the United States, we do it all over the world. We also are there to work with elections officials on how they integrate technologies into their work, into their processes, especially new and emerging technologies.

Before I talk about that, I will just say, I mean, worldwide, I think we are used to, in the U.S., having a very tech heavy process. And that's actually only come along recently. That's been since the Help America Vote Act after the 2000 election, where basically all the states were paid to buy electronic voting machines.

Whether you love them or hate them, they are actually a net positive in my view. Elsewhere in the world, people always say, hey, they hand count in France. Why can't we hand count here? Well, the answer is actually pretty simple. We have harmonized elections in the U.S. in a way that a lot of other countries don't. Right? When we say, they're having an election in France, it might just be for president. It might just be for their ministers in parliament.

And in that case-- for instance, Canada, the election they had a few weeks ago, when you went to-- Elections Canada runs that federal election and only that federal election. They hand count the election, but it's only one vote. You show up and you're voting for the one person to represent you in your one writing. So it's reasonable to hand count those pretty quickly.

We show up, and we have harmonized elections. You showed up to vote in the presidential back in November? You probably had school board, city council, dogcatcher, state reps, state senate, Congress, maybe Senate, governor. It's insane. Right? And so we need electronic equipment to help us count those in a time that people feel is reasonable.

And I'll push back a little. I'll say, in the U.S., we have a little bit of a-- we think, oh, if the polls close at 8:00, I want my elections results by 9:00. Most countries are used to waiting until the next morning for election results, especially for hand counting. So maybe we overdo it here on the quickness of results. But you can imagine just what a nightmare it would be to try and hand count a ballot like what we have.

Electronic equipment is more accurate than hand counting too. Always, in a head-to-head, it always wins. So then you get into issues of trust and all that and versus whether it's better to use electronic equipment or not. But regardless, that's kind of where we come in as Microsoft. We're a software company. We're a hardware company. So we're out there helping elect officials in various countries with whatever they need in the tech space.

JANICE BRUNNER: It's so interesting, I think, at least until you and I started speaking about this, just sometimes people don't think about it. You just expect that things are getting counted or that they're done. And you don't think about, what's the mechanic behind that? And how much work goes into that, both at a state and a federal level?

And to that point, I'm sure that we've all heard a lot about the potential societal risks of technological advancements. And AI is, obviously, on the thoughts of many today. How can technological advancements be harnessed to strengthen democratic participation and transparency? And what do you think about AI? And what are the risks related to AI and elections?

DAVE LEICHTMAN: Look, AI is a transformative technology for society. It's going to be. It is. It is happening. And within-- so I'll give a little plug. I work for Brad Smith, who's the President of Microsoft, and he has a book called Tools and Weapons. And the predicate is any societally transformational tool can be a tool or a weapon, any technology like that.

And so AI, similarly, are we worried about harms from AI? Absolutely. But there's so much good that it can bring. When I was at the Canadian Vote Summit last week in Montreal. It was kind of an after action with all the Canadian elections officials. And it's amazing how many of them see AI coming into their work in the next few years in a positive way.

And a lot of it's just around-- look, I'll say this, and I can say it 50 times and maybe not get it into your heads enough, but elections officials are heroes. They work so hard, often on a volunteer basis, for just because they love the work they do. And unfortunately, in the U.S., we've made a little bit of a hobby of vilifying elections officials and death threats and things like that.

We've seen the biggest turnover in elections officials in-- worldwide but also in the U.S.-- just in the last five years or so. And that's a shame. That's a shame because these people are heroes, and they're doing God's work. Anything we can do to make their jobs easier is a good thing.

And so exercising AI-- are there risks to elections from AI? Absolutely. There absolutely are. And last year, all the tech companies-- last year was what we called the year of elections. Like, half the world was voting. And as James said, not all of them in democratic elections necessarily. But, even Russia went to the polls. Even Iran went to the polls, but also India went to the polls. Right?

And when India has an election, it's the biggest election in the history of the world every time they do it. We think we have a lot of voters in the U.S. We have-- I don't know-- it's 200 and some million voters. In India, they have a billion voters.

So they have to hold an election over seven weeks. And every week is an election the size of Mexico, just to put it into perspective. So it's insane. Right? But there was so much going on last year. Everybody was worried the whole world was going to fall apart. Oh, no. India's democracy is going to collapse because AI is going to run rampant. And that just didn't happen.

We didn't see it. We were worried about it. We were ready for it. But it just didn't happen. And I often call last year the year of dumb AI. The most shared AI deepfake in India during the election was of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, superimposed on the rapper Lil Yachty dancing on stage. Modi thought it was so funny he retweeted it to his followers. So we saw comic value out of it. We didn't see the end of democracy.

And so that actually gives me hope this year that we can concentrate more on the good things. We were just talking with Canadian officials last week about being able to create training modules out of their elections materials, so poll worker training, things like that, processing forms faster. I know that sounds dumb, but that's a lot of their work.

Do you know what one of the hardest things, if you're a U.S. elections official, is? You have so many what are called ballot styles-- because again, we're talking about all the elections we have in the U.S.—that you have-- some precincts here in Virginia will have hundreds of different styles of ballots, just at a single precinct. And each one of them has to be proofed. You have to look for typos in every single one of those ballots. That's something AI can do. AI can do that in like that.

And so when you think about how much time and effort we could save our election heroes by exercising new technologies like that, it kind of makes me excited. I'm going to Stockholm the week after next to talk with all of the international elections officials about these same topics and kind of have a-- we're going to have a workshop discussion. What do you want out of AI? What can we help bring? What do you want to see improved in your processes of running elections? So it's an exciting time right now.

JANICE BRUNNER: It certainly is. I think technology is always an exciting topic. James, I'm curious from your perspective, what you think of technology and elections or in democracy and the sense of, if we go back to your original point at the top of the hour where you said, democracies fade from a thousand cuts, it's not overnight. So it was interesting when Dave was talking about the elections and curious as to what your perspective is on the use of technology in elections and just democracy generally, and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing or in between.

JAMES WALLER: Yeah. Thanks, Janice. I would just say two things. One is, I think generally, with technology, we're much more reactive than proactive in terms of policymaking and understanding the impact of it. I love what Dave mentioned about technology being both a tool and a weapon. So in some ways, it depends on whose hands it's in and what the intent is.

I have been struck, though, and impressed by the number of think tanks and even graduate schools now doing serious work on AI policy formulation. So, people are being trained to recognize-- most policymakers have never worked with technology at that level. Now we're recognizing that policymakers are going to have to have a clear understanding of AI, both how it can be weaponized, but also how it can be used as a tool. So that strikes me as a helpful development.

I'll go back to Kenya. Dave mentioned the 2007 elections in Kenya, which were incredibly problematic and violent, that bordered on mass atrocity. Many of us in the field of genocide studies were concerned that Kenya would tip over to that point of mass atrocity. But the next election they had several years later, I was struck by-- and I was present for this one-- how technology was used differently.

So in 2007, one of the issues was technology just through mobile phones was being used to communicate an incredible range of disinformation about, if you represent someone from this tribe and this person's elected, you're signing your own death warrant and so on. But at the next election, groups, NGOs actually, pulled together to use mobile devices in a different way, so that when disinformation started to spread, correct information could be sent out and people could be alerted to the fact of you've just seen this thing on social media or you just received this text, it is not true. This was fabricated.

And I think that went a long way to making the next round of elections much more peaceful, much less violent, gave people a much greater sense of trust in it. So it was remarkable to see the way the technology was able to restructure Kenya's notion of how these elections are carried out.

JANICE BRUNNER: Fascinating.

What do you think are the most important contributions corporations and the private sector can work together on to strengthen elections and democracy generally? James and Dave, I'd be curious to hear both your thoughts on that.

JAMES WALLER: Yeah. I'd say, sometimes people think of business and corporations and their relationship to democracy as they always put a thumb on the scale to tilt democracy one way or the other. I don't think that's the healthy way for businesses to interact with democracy. What businesses can do for democracy is improve the scale. Without putting a thumb on it one way or the other, improve it.

And I think of, if I think of a handful of things where businesses can really be effective in this area, one would be encouraging voter participation. Businesses can reach people that the rest of us may not be able to reach, to encourage voter participation. Businesses, as Dave has so well pointed out, can support free and fair elections rather than undermining free and fair elections, as we've sometimes seen historically.

I think businesses can also facilitate other forms of civic engagement. Here at UConn, at the Dodd Center, we're very conscious about reminding people, civic engagement is not just voting behavior. It's not just something you do every two years, every four years. Civic engagement's a daily event. And I think businesses can do a lot to help us understand civic engagement other than just voting.

And then I think, finally, businesses can encourage constructive engagement in the workplace. And Janice, this is what you're doing so incredibly well at Travelers. And what this day is for and what this webinar is for, is you're recognizing the corporate social responsibility to encourage civic engagement among your employees. So I think businesses can do a lot of things around the edges here to, again, not tip the scale one way or the other, as we sometimes see, particularly in corrupt regimes, but to improve the scale of how democracy is done.

JANICE BRUNNER: I, obviously, couldn't agree more. And Dave, I think you're doing so much in this space as well. And from a global perspective, are you finding that this is kind of embraced globally? I think, in the U.S., you and I are both familiar with the landscape, and the goal is really to have more businesses engaged in a positive way. But globally, what's the recognition of the public private partnership?

DAVE LEICHTMAN: It's interesting. I mean, it's so different, the perception in every different country. And some of it has to do with how the business environment is perceived. In India, we really don't work a lot with the Election Commission itself. Election Commission is so keen to be seen as spotless clean, having no interactions with any company in any way. That's how they build trust with people.

And hey, I don't necessarily agree with it, but I respect that opinion. And we engage as they want to be engaged with. Right? It's fascinating when you think about how a company can interact versus how we should, like James was just saying.

I tend to agree that companies shouldn't put their thumbs on the scale of elections. I think that we've seen a bit of that maybe too much recently. We often ask ourselves internally if we're the right voice for an issue or a statement, not just in our elections work, but in anything we do in CSR. Right?

Because you can say, does it affect our company? Does it affect the employees? In the U.S., the answer is almost always yes with any particular issue. But then are we the right voice? Does anybody care what Microsoft's stance is on gun control? Probably not. We have nothing to do with guns.

And so you have to think, what are the unique things we bring? Right? We're a technology company. So when we're out there engaging worldwide with elections officials, we're engaging on technology. Because those are the issues that they trust us on, and that's the unique value proposition that we can bring.

But just to reiterate all the things that James said and that you know, we are out there using our voice to encourage participation. And like you said, it goes beyond elections. That's probably one of the things I'm so excited about for the America250 motion going on over the next year. And for those who don't know, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence will be next July 2026, The America's semi-quincentennial. I've been practicing saying that word over and over again.

Now, there's a congressional commission which has been working with the White House on celebrations and all that stuff. But they're also trying to involve the business community in how we can use our voice to amplify this. And the thing I love about it is it promotes civic engagement and involvement in history and in the deep civic understanding of our country beyond just the election.

The election's past. That's not what we're talking about now. Now we're talking about a respect for the foundational things that make America great. And so I'm kind of excited for this opportunity over the next year. We're talking about-- I don't know if you guys are-- about doing a civics bee internally, just like they do with the kids, the Chamber of Commerce, and having a contest. Microsoft employee that wins gets to go to D.C., that kind of thing.

That's exciting. Right? And it's trying to get our own employees to recognize the value of civic participation beyond an election.

JANICE BRUNNER: I completely agree. I think that America's 250th-- and I'm just calling it America's 250th, so I don't have to say semi-- the whole word. But I think it's a great opportunity for us to come together and think about what we share as Americans and what values have really served us well for this 250 years and commemorate that and think about progress in the past and progress forward together.

So I think it's super exciting from all aspects of communities and business. And we are looking at that also and can't wait to commemorate that important event as a community. So, and I agree on civics. I mean, I think it's just a great way to get to know other people, other perspectives, and to really understand what it is that is important to our democracy and how we came to be to where we are and what we need to keep moving forward.

So with that, I think we can-- I think the people on this webinar, it's kind of, I think have already hopefully all agree. And that's why they're here with us today. So I want to take some time to go through some of the questions that people have asked. And we have great engagement.

I think we'll start-- I think we talked a little bit about what democracies have turned a corner in a positive way. What would you give as an example of what are the most stable democracies right now? James, we'll start with you.

JAMES WALLER: Sure. We have several different organizations that, every year, produce reports on the state of democracy in the world. I think, generally, the countries that always rate high in democracy levels tend to also rate high in levels of peaceability and quality of life and so on.

Those tend to be Canada, most every Scandinavian country, Australia, New Zealand always are high on these scales of democracy, peace, livability and so on. The U.S. has always been classified as a so-called full democracy or mature democracy. That changed in where most organizations now see the U.S. as a flawed democracy.

So you have probably 40 flawed democracies around the world, which are just democracies struggling with some of the basic core characteristics of what a healthy, mature democracy would be. But I think Canada, Scandinavian countries, Australia and New Zealand, you can almost always guarantee that those will be the highest on the levels of democracy and peace.

But what's most disturbing is you can also guarantee, when you look across these maps, that you will see a range from Venezuela through sub-Saharan Africa, up into the Middle East, of countries that are autocratic, not very peaceful and very often in conflict. And that J curve that runs from Venezuela up into the Middle East, that accounts for a huge proportion of the world's population.

JANICE BRUNNER: Dave, what has your-- been your observation?

DAVE LEICHTMAN: Yeah. I mean, just to bolster what James just said, I mean, part of that is we see, especially in Africa, what's called the coup belt. Right? And I think the pandemic actually was a really instructional time for democracy in the world. It allowed some autocratic rulers to show their colors, I guess, to just-- I don't know how to better say that.

But it gave some military dictatorships some excuse to just become military dictatorships when maybe they weren't before. Right? So a bunch of the African countries had military coups that they have no intention of reversing. Right?

They all said, oh, we'll hold elections at some point. And they've almost all backtracked on that, to the point where we don't expect elections happening anytime soon in Mali or in Mauritania or Burkina Faso, these areas that James was talking about. But yeah, I do-- I still think what you said before about the U-turn is encouraging. And it shows one of the main features of democracy is resilience. Right?

And some democratic countries, democracy ebbs and flows, it waxes and wanes. And we will see that, and I think Poland was a great example, like you said. People were really worried about backsliding in Poland, Brazil. And they've since been on the upswing. I think Romania has shown a great resilience in-- we talked about election, how technology can swing an election.

Well, technology, social media directly impacted the result of the election to the point where they threw it out. But they held a new one, and they held a fair one, a free and fair election. And now the people of Romania agree on the results of that election. And they're going to have a new government, and that's good. Right? That's exactly the kind of resilience we want to see out of democracy.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's interesting. Can you just talk a little-- can you just give a little overview of what happened there, for people who aren't familiar with it? Yeah.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: Yeah. For people who aren't familiar, it's a little controversial. And so I don't want to dive too deep into it. But the very far right candidate was polling somewhere around 1%. And the government has alleged-- and there is good reason to believe that it is true-- that the Russian government funded social media campaigns on TikTok for that candidate.

That candidate then got 20% of the vote, coming in first place in the first round of the election. That was a shock to most Romanians who weren't expecting it, especially those in government. They then made a very controversial decision to cancel the runoff in December and rehold the election. And it was just reheld a few weeks ago, first round and second round.

And whether you agree or not with canceling it, I'm not going to take a side there because certain people have certain views on that and the way that freedom of speech is handled and such. But I will say that the result, I think, is a good result, in that democratic institutions prevailed, and the result was resilience.

JANICE BRUNNER: So interesting. One of the questions we have in the chat is about misinformation and disinformation. And how do you identify misinformation and disinformation or how do you even define it? And who decides? James, do you want to take that one.

JAMES WALLER: No, not really. I was hoping Dave was going to jump in.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: I can. I can.

JAMES WALLER: I think this is one of the significant issues we face, particularly on social media with algorithms that keep driving us to the same sources of information, the silos of information is-- it used to be said, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. And in a way, now we've come to see one person's information is another person's disinformation. And it's hard to say who the ultimate arbiter of that truth is.

I do think we have some, as you've described this program, aggressively nonpartisan NGO groups who are watching the news, who are watching for the information, who are trying to identify disinformation. But once you've dug yourself into your own silo of like-minded people and like-minded sources of information, it's really difficult to believe that anything you've taken as information could be understood as disinformation.

JANICE BRUNNER: Really hard.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: I will say, there is a set of pieces of information that are unquestionably true or false. Right? And when we talk about elections, most governments worldwide have empowered their elections commissions to act on misinformation about what we would call time, place, manner, method of elections. So the election is on Tuesday is a true fact. Right?

And if I am trying to put out social media saying, Democrats vote on Wednesday, that is factually incorrect. And most-- several states, many countries worldwide, especially those who just had elections, have newly empowered their commissions to act on that. So if it's direct, provably false information about the election, they have authority to take it down.

And the tech companies have all widely, generally, agreed that that is right and proper. Beyond that, to James' point, we don't arbitrate, and you don't want us arbitrate-- like, you don't want us being the arbiters in there. Companies should not be the arbiters of free speech.

So we tend to favor more of a sourcing. So we call it content provenance. Right? Instead of trying to tell you what's real and what is not, I just like to be able to tell you that something came from a specific source or not.

The Minnesota Secretary of State's office should be the only one you're listening to about when and where a Minnesota election is held. And therefore, I'm not necessarily going to tell you that this statement is true or false about Minnesota elections, but I can tell you whether it came from the Minnesota Secretary of State's office or not. And so that's called provenance. And I think that's going to be an important discussion in information integrity moving forward is where the provenance of information, as opposed to the correctness of it or not.

JANICE BRUNNER: Makes sense. We had a conversation with the secretary of state, and their advice was really just go, make sure you go to their website. If you receive anything that says, this polling place, the lines are long, or this election has been moved or anything of that nature, really you need to go to the source because you don't know.

And oftentimes, it's not even that there's a bad actor. It may be that I receive something from my neighbor that says, oh, this election line is long, or it's been moved, and I forward it on. But I don't know that they received it from-- no one knows where it came from originally. And next thing, it's kind of gone to the point where a falsehood is being kind of unwittingly spread and people aren't-- so I agree with you. And it sounds like that's the best approach.

Also, to check multiple sources for your news, I think. We partner with a company called AllSides, which we're big fans of. And they basically will take news and aggregate it. This is what the left is saying. This is what the right's saying. This is what the center is saying.

And so when you're looking at a topic, you can see across the spectrum what different people are saying. And it's really helpful to just put everything in perspective. And you may end up not changing your mind or kind of having your same view, but at least you can see that there's other perspectives out there.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: I want to hold up a gold standard in world elections right now. The Australian elections commission, which is widely considered one of the best commissions in the world, ahead of their election, ran a public interest campaign called Stop and Consider. And I just loved the campaign. I encourage everybody to go look at it if they can. But it's exactly what it sounds like. Right?

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah.

DAVE LEICHTMAN: When you're looking at social media, stop. Consider it. It's all we’re asking. Right? Think about whether what you're seeing is true or false or misinformation before you spread it.

JANICE BRUNNER: Super good. It reminds me of that old stop, drop and roll. Stop and think, which is easier said than done.

Trust. How do you-- there's a lot of talk about trust. And people don't trust a lot of things. And we could talk about that forever. But what can we do, in our own world, to make things better? So we're probably not going to change everything overnight, but what's an action item that we could do ourselves to improve trust, to improve our communities, to improve the things we're worried about generally?

JAMES WALLER: Yeah. I would say, what I always emphasize with my students are two points in this regard. The first is responsibility. Recognizing that, for this thing to work, for democracy to work, each of us have to be responsible. And that responsibility starts right now, wherever you are.

You don't need a college degree. You don't need a master's, a Ph.D. You don't need a job. You don't need a title, that all of us have the responsibility right now, particularly in the U.S., where we're dealing with democratic erosion. I mean, it's fashionable for people to say, that's only happened pretty recently.

In truth, every data set we have on democracy in our country says, since the early 1970s, democratic institutions have been eroding under Republican administrations, Democratic administrations. We just haven't taken good care of democracy. So recognizing we all have the responsibility to do it, I think, is a starting point.

And then the second point I raise is also recognizing the leverage we have. Particularly with high school, college students, young adults, there's a sense of, I just don't have any power to make change here. All of us have some pretty incredible points of leverage. I tell my students, you have points of leverage. You can reach people that I'll never be able to reach, that I'll never have any leverage with. You have those points of leverage.

So I think, if we recognize and accept the responsibility we have to make democracy work, and then we find those unique points of leverage where we can have an impact that maybe other people in our community can't have because of the position we find ourselves in. That, to me, is crucial.

And the final thing I'll say is just all of that being animated by the belief, which I do fully believe, that every story has a possibility for a better ending. Even if it doesn't look like things are going great, every story has a possibility for a better ending, and we can be part of making that better ending.

JANICE BRUNNER: I love that. I'm writing that down. I like that a lot. I'm going to tell my kids that when I go home tonight. Dave, what about you?

DAVE LEICHTMAN: Gosh, I don't think I can say it better than that. I love that. Well said. Yeah. It's incumbent to all of us to help build trust in the system.

And I will say, one of the things that elections officials have picked up on in the last few cycles that I absolutely love is the idea of ambassadors in the communities. Picking, finding religious authorities or community authorities that people listen to and helping them understand what the processes of government are, what the real, the real truth of civics is and how important it is that people participate, and empowering them with the message to communicate it to others in the community.

And I think that that is just so crucial. Like, trust has to be built. Trust has to be earned, and just holding an election isn't a reason to trust somebody. You need to have-- you need to build that trust. You need to earn that trust. And you need to work with the community to build that trust.

So I love this notion recently of just trying to work with the community to get people to understand the facts of elections and how they work and how civics works. You said it more artfully, James, but essentially, it's all of us together, working together. Right?

JANICE BRUNNER: I totally agree.

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Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute. A Series on Civic Engagement. Watch Replays: travelers institute.org. Connect: LinkedIn, Janice G. Brunner. Take Our Survey: Link in Chat. Hashtag CitizenTravelers.

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Well, with that, we are at the end of our webinar. And thanks so much. It was great to spend time with you, and it was great to learn a little bit more about what's going on in the world, and we hope you'll come back again.

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Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute. A Series on Civic Engagement.

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