Patrick Merloe is senior associate and director of electoral programs at the National Democratic Institute (NDI), where he has engaged in electoral-integrity activities in more than sixty countries. He publishes widely on elections, human rights, and international law.
Nonpartisan election monitoring has helped to foster democratization over the last thirty years, but now dictators are trying to sabotage it, often by spreading lies and confusion.
In recent years, as leading authoritarian countries such as China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela have become emboldened within the global arena, challenging the liberal international political order, the advanced democracies have retreated rather than responding to this threat.
