Isn't it time to think of a Global Election System?
Of all 80 national elections worldwide in 2016, 35 are on the way. This means that about 35 nations are going to hold Presidential and Parliamentary elections or vote for very important decisions on National Referendums.
Elections are the most sensible piece of Democracy that every nation has achieved through centuries of fighting, wars, bloodshed and search for peace. Democracy, with all its challenges and up and downs, has made world a better place if we imagine millions of people killed under brutal kings and sword-men in thousands of years of history of mankind. Democracy has made the world a better place for mankind, but has the world made Democracy better? In other words, is the Democracy evolving fast enough?
In the dawn of 21st Century, borders of countries do not conceptually exist any longer farther than geographical lines. Any national decision in any country has direct consequences on other countries and nations and that happens to be larger consequences when the decisions are made by people of more powerful nations. That is true too when decisions of authorities leading less developed countries can cause real threats to world peace. Either it is the United States or Saudi Arabia, Germany or Libya, Japan and Iran, national decisions do not rest within borders of each country. They go farther.
In last years of experiencing political and social turmoils in Brazil, Iran, Ukraine, and Arab countries during Arab Spring, no matter how turmoils were shut down or resolved by whom, the national election system in many of these countries went wrong by results or politicians elected through this system worked against the electors' will in their countries.
There's a huge list of malfunctions with national election systems worldwide such as 2009 disputed elections in Iran, rise and fall of Ekhvan-ol-Moslemin Islamists to power in Egypt and recent mess among Brazil and Argentina politicians. So far, we could fool ourselves and tell everybody that any big decision any nation makes has good or evil consequences on themselves and that has nothing to do with us. Today we can't even tell this confidently.
When you broaden your view out of internal affairs of countries and achieve external look at them, every single vote a citizen casts has a direct job to do with other citizens of world.
A single election held in Iran more than a decade ago brought an extremist in power causing world to consume much of its political capacity on Iranian nuclear case all these years and draw the world closer to a destructive war. Fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in a fully democratic will allowed Islamic jihadists take over other groups in violence and establish a solid base for their activities. Continues, repetitive elections of President Putin in Russia allows him to insecure other countries to secure his sometimes maniac policies. Election of an extremist right-wing party in Israel guarantees failure of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis for another decade. That's just enough for a two-term US President to waste his political career on peace talks determined to fail. Elections here, elections there, elections everywhere. Even North Korea has an election and that looks fine!
2016 US Presidential Election is just another example showing how important can decisions of people of one country be to people of Earth. Whether you are an Environmentalist or you support destruction of nuclear arms, whether you are a person living in Iran waiting to see outcome of recent nuclear deal with US and 5+1 or you're just a legal or illegal Mexican immigrant in California, the choice of people of the United States will hit you in face unexceptionally.
The rise of Donald Trump and "Trumping" phenomena has caught attentions of people and world leaders by fear and anxiety. Him being President can rip President Obama's progressive achievements and turn Americans back by ages. His election won't stay within the United States because his and his party's policies are real threats to global stability and environmental efforts to push back the speed of climate change caused by human activity.
In my idea, evolution of democracy is too slow and world needs a different functioning system. The United Nations as a planetary democracy institute is very weak, otherwise it could force countries by resolutions to limit Presidency or Leadership to a range of time like 8 to 10 years, establish a worldwide election system where national elections are held internationally and each nation can cast votes on candidates of other nations proportionally according to their score in UN ratings. With a system like this, every nation can get a score based on their improvements on respecting human rights, fighting corruption and being more productive. That score can define how much a country can use its influence on decisions made by people of other countries. It is in basic instinct of every nation, every country and every healthy or corrupt politician to be able to gain more influence on other countries. And if we open this possibility by organizing a global system in which countries with more productivity, more respect to human rights and more open societies can influence other countries more than the way they could do it by spending money, and showing it to a leader that if he or she fails to gain productivity, fails to deal with minorities well and fails to fight corruption, other countries are going to use more influence on his or her country, it will be the first choice for almost every leader to cooperate with such a global system.
President Rahmon of Tajikistan who claims more than 90 percent of people of his country have voted in his favor to rule forever and that's happened while he is a four-term President of Tajikistan.
For those who might say I'm radical I must say that the same things are running on Earth today with an exception within the heart of the system. Today it's money flowing to terrorist organizations, lobbyists and brutal dictators that defines the level of influence. It's not radical to replace it with a global election system where every leader sees even more opportunity to influence other nations than he could with money. The difference would be the leaders' decisions to push their countries towards real liberal democracies, not brutal authoritarian regimes to leave their trace on other parts of the world.
----- PS: More than 3 weeks after publishing this article, Brexit (UK Referendum to stay or quit European Union) turned out to be what many worried about: UK chose to quit EU. Reading all the way across a variety of posts and analysis made by professional economists, socialists and politicians with many of them emphasizing on disastrous effects of UK people's decision, not just on themselves but to other European countries and even the United States, importance of thinking about a new way of holding elections and working to get to standards required for such an upgrade in democracy, now look inevitable.