Oct. 30 · Elections
Zombie Democracy
The Countries Still Voting After Elections Stopped Working
Hey, guess who’s releasing a book today? Me. Zombie Democracy is out. The paperback is $19.99 in the ER store, or you can download the PDF for free.
Vote. Please vote. Now, the article.
In 2021, Kenneth Roth, who led Human Rights Watch for 29 years, called Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela and Russia zombie democracies: governments that keep the form of elections without the substance. In plain terms, a zombie democracy is a nation where people go through the ritual of voting but what actually happens in policy is totally disconnected from the public will. All four kept holding elections afterward. The United States holds elections too.
On July 26, 2024, Donald Trump told a Turning Point Action audience of Christians, “You won’t have to vote anymore.” He did not cancel the elections. From May 22, 2025, through June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court let him remove members of four independent agencies and withhold $4 billion Congress had appropriated. Trump fired 17 inspectors general on Jan. 24, 2025. ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, grew to about 29,000 employees by July 2026, roughly 8,000 more than on the day he took office. He banned three newsrooms from the White House on Sept. 18, 2026. Elections continued through all of it. A public that loses faith in elections as a route to reform gets radicalized, so the regime stays short of that: obstruction and middling interference are enough to give the appearance that we just need to vote harder next time, or that maybe some investigations can happen.
I wrote Zombie Democracy to find out whether the United States has become one. The book is built on a test of eight questions, one for each thing your vote is supposed to control, asking whether it still does.
Representation. Does the House still reflect how the country voted?
The power of the purse. Does Congress still decide what the government spends?
Rule of law. Does the executive obey court orders?
An impartial court. Does the Supreme Court rule the same way for presidents of both parties?
Civilian control of force. Do the military, the National Guard, ICE and federal law enforcement answer to whomever the voters elect?
A free press. Can reporters cover the executive from inside its buildings without being barred for what they publish?
Political prosecutions. Can the opposition oppose without being investigated or indicted for it?
Accountability. Do the institutions built to catch abuse still act: the inspectors general, the whistleblower channels, the bar committees, the prosecutors and the Senate?
The book asks the same eight questions about Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary before it asks them about the United States, and it ends with what our states can do about it. I saved the hope for the end because it has to be earned.
Every question in the test is about a federal office, and the state offices are on the ballot Tuesday too. A governor can keep the state police out of federal immigration raids. A secretary of state can refuse to hand the voter file to the Justice Department. An attorney general can sue. A legislature can charter a public bank and build a state health plan. Those are the people who decide whether a state uses the powers it already has, and we pick them on Tuesday.
If you want the whole thing, the PDF is free for everyone, and the paperback is $19.99 in the ER store.
None of this keeps going without you. This publication runs on readers, and if you want to keep it running, buy the book, grab some merch from the store or become a paid subscriber. Every bit of it goes back into this work.