United States: Freedom in the World 2023 Country Report | Freedom House (original) (raw)

A Electoral Process

A1 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The president, who serves as both head of state and head of government, is elected for up to two four-year terms. Presidential elections are decided by an Electoral College, with electors apportioned to each state based on the size of its congressional representation. In most cases, all of the electors in a particular state cast their ballots for the candidate who won the statewide popular vote, regardless of the margin. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, have chosen to divide their electoral votes between the candidates based on their popular-vote performance in each congressional district.

In the 2020 election, Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, won 306 Electoral College votes, leaving Trump, the Republican incumbent, with 232. Biden defeated Trump by more than seven million votes, or approximately 4.4 percentage points, in the national popular balloting. Turnout was the highest recorded in more than a century, with roughly two-thirds of the eligible population casting a ballot.

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled many states to increase access to early and mail-in voting, partly to help prevent dangerous crowding at polling sites. This led to a series of legal battles, with the Trump campaign and other Republican litigants generally arguing against the changes and claiming that they would open the door to fraud. The balloting itself unfolded with few significant disruptions, though existing obstacles to voting—such as strict voter-identification requirements and inadequate numbers of polling sites—remained a factor. Meanwhile, the federal government assisted states in safeguarding ballots and computer networks against foreign and other illegal interference, while social media companies made greater efforts to thwart election-related disinformation campaigns by foreign actors on their platforms. These measures were generally deemed successful.

Rejecting a vote-tabulation process that was lauded by observers as transparent and professional, in the weeks after the election Trump refused to concede, continued to allege fraud, and openly pressured election officials in pivotal states to make decisions that would support his claims regardless of the facts and the law. During the counting and certification process, state election workers reported intimidation and death threats. A raft of lawsuits by the Trump campaign and its allies were almost universally dismissed by state and federal courts. Evidence of large-scale fraud was nonexistent, but the Trump camp’s disinformation, complemented by the reluctance of leading Republicans to explicitly acknowledge Biden as the president-elect, helped to convince many Trump supporters that voter fraud was widespread and Biden was not the rightful winner.

Evidence later emerged regarding last-ditch efforts to overturn the results, including machinations by Trump and allied officials or lawyers to involve the Justice Department and other government agencies in supporting the president’s fraud claims, to enlist then vice president Mike Pence in blocking certification of Biden’s victory, and to work with Republican activists to put forward illegitimate pro-Trump slates of electors in states that Biden won.

Trump administration officials and allies also encouraged resistance to Biden’s victory from voters and citizen groups, culminating on January 6, 2021, when several thousand Trump supporters assembled near the White House for a “Save America” rally. Following inflammatory speeches by Trump and others, the crowd converged on the US Capitol as the counting of the Electoral College ballots proceeded. Upon encountering an inadequate deployment of police, the group turned violent, using both concealed and improvised weapons to break through barricades, assault police officers, and forcibly enter the Capitol, where intruders searched for lawmakers, vandalized offices, and occupied the Senate chamber as members were evacuated. The group was dispersed after several hours, following the delayed arrival of the National Guard. In all, seven people died in connection with the attack, including a policeman who suffered strokes after clashing with the mob and a rioter who was shot by police near the House chamber. Nearly 140 police officers were injured, as were scores of civilians.

Among Republicans, a divide emerged in the weeks after the election between state officials involved in administering the balloting, who generally defended the fairness of the process and the accuracy of the results, and many members of Congress, who gave credence to Trump’s claims and cast doubt on Biden’s victory. When Congress reconvened late on January 6 to complete the Electoral College count, just eight senators lodged objections to state results, but 139 of the 211 Republicans in the House of Representatives at the time supported baseless objections to the vote counts in at least one state. Biden’s inauguration proceeded without incident on January 20.

The events of January 6 prompted several institutional responses. The following week, the House voted to impeach Trump on the charge of incitement of insurrection, with 10 Republicans joining all 222 Democrats to approve the measure. The ensuing Senate trial concluded in February with Trump’s acquittal, as only 57 of the required 67 senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict. In July 2021, a House select committee was formed to investigate the January 6 attack; only two Republican House members agreed to join. The select committee defined its mandate broadly, aiming to clarify both the events of January 6 and the wider efforts to overturn the election results.

The January 6 committee interviewed scores of witnesses, issued an array of subpoenas for documents and testimony by Trump administration officials and allies, and between June and October 2022 held public hearings featuring live testimony and recorded depositions. The investigation culminated in a report released in December 2022, which assigned primary responsibility for the violence to Trump and referred him to the Justice Department for possible prosecution on charges that included inciting insurrection and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Republican critics derided the investigation as a partisan smear campaign, and Trump, his top political allies, and high-ranking Republican Party officials refused to comply with subpoenas. The House voted to hold four nonrespondents in contempt of Congress; two were indicted, and one of the two, prominent Trump adviser Steve Bannon, received a four-month jail sentence in October, with an appeal pending.

Other investigations of Trump’s postelection activity accelerated during 2022, including a special grand jury probe of efforts to pressure Georgia officials to alter the state’s election results. In November, US attorney general Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to examine Trump’s role in the planning of the January 6 violence, as well as any criminal liability related to a cache of classified government documents that were recovered in an August raid on his Florida estate. Trump and his allies continued to dismiss all such investigations as political persecution, even as his repeated attempts to block the inquiries in court largely failed.

A2 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

Elections for the bicameral Congress are generally free and competitive. The House of Representatives consists of 435 members serving two-year terms. The Senate consists of 100 members—two from each of the 50 states—serving six-year terms, with one-third coming up for election every two years. All national legislators are elected directly by voters in the districts or states that they represent.

The capital district, Puerto Rico, and four overseas US territories are each represented by an elected delegate in the House who can perform most legislative functions but cannot participate in floor votes.

Midterm elections were held in November 2022 and resulted in a change of control of the House of Representatives, while the Senate remained under Democratic control. Republicans gained nine House seats, giving them a majority of 222 to the Democrats’ 213. Following a runoff Senate election in Georgia in December, Democrats held 48 Senate seats, and there were two independent senators who generally vote with the Democrats, giving them control of the chamber; one other senator elected as a Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, shifted to independent status following the election. Turnout was approximately 47 percent of eligible voters, nearly matching the relatively high figure from the 2018 midterms.

There were no serious accusations of result-altering fraud in any race in 2022, and most losing candidates quickly conceded, including many of the hundreds of Trump-aligned Republican candidates who continued to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential results.

A3 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The electoral framework is generally fair, though it is subject to some partisan manipulation. The borders of House districts, which must remain roughly equal in population, are redrawn regularly—typically after each decennial census. In the practice known as partisan gerrymandering, House districts, and those for state legislatures, are crafted to maximize the advantage of the party in power in a given state. The redistricting system varies by state, but in most cases it is overseen by elected officials, and observers have expressed alarm at the growing strategic and technical sophistication of partisan efforts to control redistricting processes and redraw electoral maps. Historically, gerrymandering has also been used as a tool of racial disenfranchisement, specifically targeting Black voters, as well as Hispanic and Native American populations. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 generally prohibits racially discriminatory voting rules, and racial gerrymandering has been subject to reversal by federal courts, but it remains a problem in practice. In February 2022, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to implement a district map that had been rejected as a racial gerrymander by a lower court; similarly controversial maps in several other states were subsequently upheld by federal judges.

In 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that the federal judiciary has no authority to prevent state politicians from drawing districts to preserve or expand their party’s power. However, some state courts have struck down partisan-gerrymandered maps based on their own constitutions, and a handful of states have established independent bodies to manage redistricting in recent years. Following the finalization of the 2020 census results and corresponding reapportionment, state redistricting occurred in 2021 and 2022, leading to multiple legal battles over gerrymandered maps ahead of the 2022 midterms. Both major parties continued to engage in partisan gerrymandering, but Republicans had greater opportunity to redraw state-level maps because they controlled more state legislatures nationwide, and key maps favoring Democrats were successfully challenged in state courts.

Some states have adopted strict voter-identification laws. These documentation requirements can disproportionately limit participation by poor, elderly, or racial minority voters; people with disabilities; and younger voters, especially college students. Proponents of such laws argue that they prevent voter fraud, despite research showing that fraud is extremely rare. Separately, the closure and consolidation of polling places in several states in recent years have been found to reduce turnout by people who are less able to travel to distant polling locations or wait in long lines.

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of his 2020 defeat and his promotion of false fraud claims spurred a new wave of state electoral legislation: between the beginning of 2021 and October 2022, 21 states—nearly all with Republican-controlled legislatures—had passed 42 new laws that made voting more difficult, with provisions including stricter voter-identification requirements; reduced eligibility for mail-in ballots; and limits on interactions at polling places, such as a ban on offering water to voters waiting in line. Other states, however, moved in the opposite direction, with 12 mostly Democratic-led states passing 19 laws intended to facilitate voting.

An emerging concern since the 2020 election has been efforts by Trump-supporting election deniers to take control of election management authority in states that are closely contested in presidential elections; their opponents argue that such actors could facilitate the partisan subversion of legitimate presidential election outcomes in the future. In the 2022 elections, however, a series of election deniers were defeated in races for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state, a key election administration post, in crucial states such as Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Separately, a spending bill passed by Congress in December 2022 included reforms designed to minimize the possibility of a constitutional crisis arising from bad-faith interpretations of the ambiguously worded Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law governing congressional validation of the Electoral College votes from the states.

Critics have argued that some components of the US constitution are undemocratic because they violate the principle that each citizen’s vote should carry equal weight. For example, the allocation of two Senate seats to each state regardless of size has meant that senators representing a minority of the population are often able to control the chamber. Because the Electoral College allocates votes to the states based on the size of their congressional delegations, it too is affected by the makeup of the Senate; this makes it possible for a candidate to win the presidency while losing the national popular vote, an outcome that took place in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2016. Defenders of these systems argue that they are fundamental to the United States’ constitutional tradition and federal structure, which was designed in part to check the influence of more populous states.

The six-member Federal Election Commission (FEC), whose membership is split between Democrats and Republicans, is tasked with enforcing federal campaign finance laws. Most enforcement actions require four votes, allowing partisan obstruction, and the body has been regarded as largely ineffective in recent years.

B Political Pluralism and Participation

B1 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The intensely competitive US political environment is dominated by two major parties: the Republicans on the right and the left-leaning Democrats. The country’s prevailing “first past the post” or majoritarian electoral system discourages the emergence of additional parties. The two parties’ primary elections allow for a relatively broad array of views and candidates to enter the political system, although those in many states exclude unaffiliated voters from this important stage of the electoral process. Both the 2020 and 2022 primaries and general elections featured participation by ideologically diverse candidates across the country.

For the many seats at all levels that are regarded as “safely” Democratic or Republican, due to a combination of geographical sorting and partisan gerrymandering, primaries often represent the main battleground for opposing views. Republican incumbents, especially in the House, have faced sharp competition from more right-wing, sometimes Trump-backed challengers in recent voting cycles, and left-wing Democrats have challenged a number of moderate, party-backed candidates. In 2022, attention focused on the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment in January 2021. Four members of the group opted to retire, and four were defeated in primaries, including Representative Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the January 6 investigative committee and previously the third-ranked leader of Republicans in the House; the remaining two members managed to win their primaries and were reelected in November.

Independent or third-party candidates have sometimes influenced presidential races or won statewide office, and small parties and ideological factions—such as the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and the Democratic Socialists of America—have also modestly affected state and local politics in recent years. Several jurisdictions, including Maine, Alaska, and New York City, have adopted ranked-choice voting systems for some posts, which could prove more hospitable to third parties and centrist candidates than the majoritarian system, though in practice the results have generally matched those of the traditional plurality system.

B2 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

Power changes hands regularly at the federal level, and while certain states and localities are seen as strongholds of one party or the other, even they are subject to intraparty competition and interparty power transfers over time. In the 2022 elections, Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives following two terms of Democratic leadership, but their gains were smaller than expected. Democrats gained the governorships in Maryland and Arizona, leaving them with 24 compared with Republicans’ 26. Republicans maintained control over a solid majority of state legislatures and enjoyed both legislative and gubernatorial control in 21 states, compared with 17 states where Democrats led both branches of government.

Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to Biden in 2020 and early 2021 put serious pressure on the political and electoral systems, eroding the long-standing tradition of respect for official results and highlighting potential structural weaknesses that could be exploited by future candidates. While most Republican candidates who denied the legitimacy of Biden’s victory lost in statewide races in 2022, at least 150 such candidates won congressional races, and the persistence of unfounded doubts about the fairness of election administration continued to cause concern that future transfers of power could be disrupted.

B3 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

Various interest groups have come to play a potent role in the nominating process for president and members of Congress, partly because the expense and length of political campaigns place a premium on candidates’ ability to raise large amounts of funds from major donors. While there have been a number of attempts to restrict the role of money in political campaigning, most have been thwarted or watered down as a result of political opposition, lobbying by interest groups, and court decisions that equate political spending with free speech.

The 2020 election campaigns included by far the most expensive presidential race ever, and 2022 marked the most expensive midterms to date. As with other recent campaigns, much of the spending was routed through various types of “super PACs” (political action committees that are not supposed to coordinate with any candidate), nonprofit organizations, and other legal entities that often protect donor anonymity and carry few restrictions on the size and source of donations. Small donations make up an important share of candidates’ fundraising, but extremely wealthy contributors play an outsized role in overall spending.

Concerns about undue influence have also focused on lobbyists and others working for foreign governments who associate themselves with politicians or political campaigns. The Justice Department has increased enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to ensure transparency, but prosecutions alleging illegal consultant work for foreign powers have often resulted in acquittals.

The January 2021 attack on Congress underscored a broader rise in violence and intimidation as a tool of political influence in the United States. Numerous known affiliates of right-wing extremist groups participated in the attack, and many Republicans and far-right media figures later sought to recast it as a patriotic protest or a defense of election integrity. Nearly 15 percent of the rioters who faced criminal charges had a law enforcement or military background; the participation of military veterans prompted the Defense Department to order a broad review of measures necessary to minimize extremist behavior among active-duty troops.

Federal and state criminal investigations into the insurrection continued throughout 2022. As of late 2022, more than 950 people had been charged, with over 460 pleading guilty and 325 receiving sentences, including up to 10 years in prison. The most serious charges were filed against members of two far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, for their alleged coordination of the January 6 violence. In November, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was convicted on multiple counts, though he and several codefendants were also acquitted of some charges.

Meanwhile, reports of threats against elected officials and local election administrators have proliferated in recent years, with members of Congress subjected to a dramatic rise in intimidation. The risks were illustrated in October 2022, when a man was arrested for a brutal assault on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at their San Francisco home; the speaker, who was not present at the time, was the intruder’s intended target. Armed individuals were also arrested near the homes of conservative Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in June and Pramila Jayapal, a progressive congresswoman from Washington State, in July.

Score Change: The score improved from 2 to 3 because there was no repetition of political or election-related violence on the scale of the January 2021 Capitol attack, and numerous participants in that attack and related malfeasance were successfully prosecuted amid ongoing state and federal investigations.

B4 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

A number of important laws are designed to ensure the political rights of members of racial and ethnic minority groups, and recent elections have featured an increase in candidates representing such groups. The Congress elected in 2020 included the first openly gay Black House members and record or near-record numbers of Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islander, LGBT+, and women lawmakers. Kamala Harris, whose mother and father were Indian and Jamaican immigrants, respectively, became the first Black American, the first Asian American, and the first woman to win election as vice president. The 2022 midterm elections included a record number of candidates from minority groups, as well as the first openly lesbian women to be elected as governors (in Massachusetts and Oregon), and the first women elected as governor or senator in several states. Nevertheless, White Americans and men have remained highly overrepresented in Congress, in state legislatures, and in senior policymaking positions.

Racial and ethnic minority communities are disproportionately affected by laws and policies that create obstacles to voting and winning elected office. In 2013 the Supreme Court invalidated portions of the VRA of 1965, allowing certain states that previously had to submit legal changes for preclearance by federal authorities to adopt election laws without prior review. In the years since, in addition to adopting voter-identification requirements and limiting polling locations, a number of states—including some that were never subject to the preclearance rule—have partially rolled back innovations like early voting that contributed to higher rates of participation among minority groups. In 2021, the Supreme Court upheld restrictive Arizona voting rules against a VRA challenge, signaling a further weakening of the VRA as a safeguard against discriminatory state laws.

Various other state election-management policies have been criticized for having a disparate impact on racial and ethnic minority communities, including voter-roll purges, arbitrary bureaucratic hurdles to registration, and efforts to punish voter fraud—a very rare phenomenon in US elections. Several Republican-led states created law enforcement units to investigate voter fraud following the 2020 election, yielding meager results. The most aggressive action occurred in Florida, where the arrests of at least 19 people—nearly all of them Black—in August 2022 were followed by questions about whether any of them had intentionally sought to evade eligibility rules.

State laws that deny voting rights to citizens with felony convictions continue to disproportionately disenfranchise Black Americans, who are incarcerated at significantly higher rates than other populations. All but two states suspend voting rights during incarceration for felonies; a growing number of states have eased restrictions on voting rights after incarceration or during probation and parole, but the issue remains controversial. Overall, researchers estimated that more than five million people were disenfranchised for the 2020 elections due to felony convictions.

C Functioning of Government

C1 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The elected president and Congress are generally empowered to determine government policies and craft legislation. However, partisan polarization and obstruction in Congress has repeatedly delayed appropriations bills across multiple administrations, resulting in a series of partial shutdowns of federal government operations, most recently in 2018–19. Throughout 2021 and 2022, Republicans in the Senate effectively slowed the confirmation of Biden’s executive branch nominees, resulting in scores of vacant positions in the higher levels of government departments and agencies as of December. Such vacancies make it difficult or impossible for the relevant agencies to operate as intended by law.

Congress’s ability to serve as a check on potential abuses by the executive was thrown into doubt during the Trump administration. After Democrats gained a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections, the administration frequently clashed with Congress in ways that undermined the legislature’s constitutional oversight authority. Proposed reforms meant to address these problems by strengthening Congress’s oversight powers had yet to win passage in 2022.

C2 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The United States benefits from strong structural safeguards against official corruption, including a traditionally independent law enforcement system, a free and vigorous press, and an active civil society sector. A variety of regulations and oversight institutions within government are designed to curb conflicts of interest and prevent other situations that could lead to malfeasance. However, regulations pertaining to the influence of money in US politics have long been criticized as an inadequate barrier against corruption.

The practices of the Trump administration exposed additional weaknesses in existing norms of government ethics and probity, particularly with respect to conflicts of interest between officials’ public roles and private business activity, and the protection of government whistleblowers from arbitrary dismissal or other reprisals. Since 2021, lawmakers have advanced a number of bills meant to address these gaps in ethics rules, but the reform legislation failed to make significant progress during 2022.

The Biden administration has issued executive orders that strengthened ethics rules within the executive branch, and watchdog groups described its efforts to limit cabinet members’ conflicts of interest as effective. However, critics continued to highlight ethics questions involving Biden’s son Hunter; Republicans campaigning in the 2022 midterms frequently pledged to launch congressional investigations of Hunter Biden’s business activities, and a federal probe was ongoing during the year.

Separately, the stock-trading practices of scores of federal lawmakers have come under scrutiny for alleged conflicts of interest, prompting unsuccessful efforts in 2022 to advance legislation that would restrict members’ ability to trade stocks.

C3 1.00-4.00 pts0-4 pts

The United States was the first country to adopt a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) over 50 years ago, and the law—along with its state-level counterparts—is actively used by journalists, civil society groups, researchers, and members of the public. A 2016 reform law was designed to improve government agencies’ responsiveness to FOIA requests, and reporters and activists were able to use FOIA filings to obtain important documents on the Trump administration that congressional investigators could not access through normal oversight requests or subpoenas. Nevertheless, government performance on FOIA requests declined during Trump’s presidency, and in 2020 the coronavirus-induced transition to remote work by government employees produced a sharp drop in responsiveness to information requests at the federal, state, and local levels. Complaints about serious backlogs and calls for further FOIA reform persisted through 2022.

The executive branch includes a substantial number of auditing and investigative agencies that are designed to be independent of political influence; such bodies are often spurred to action by the investigative work of journalists. In 2020, however, Trump arbitrarily fired or replaced a series of agency inspectors general who had documented or investigated malfeasance by administration officials. In December 2022, Congress passed a spending bill that included provisions intended to reinforce the independence of inspectors general and protect them from presidential interference.