Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: The Inter-American Democratic Charter (referred to in this section as the Charter ), done at Lima September 11, 2001, established a set of shared democratic principles and norms among member states of the Organization of American States (referred to in this section as the OAS ), including commitments to the separation of powers and independence of the branches of government, pluralistic systems of political parties and organizations, and free, transparent, and fair elections.
Articles 1 and 2 of the Charter recognize, respectively, that [t]he peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to promote and defend it and that [t]he effective exercise of representative democracy is the basis for the rule of law and [constitutional order in OAS member states] . Article 3 of the Charter asserts that access to and the exercise of power in accordance with the rule of law and the holding of periodic, free, and fair elections based on secret balloting and universal suffrage as an expression of the sovereignty of the people are essential elements of representative democracy.
Article 4 of the Charter states that “[t]ransparency in government activities, probity, responsible public administration on the part of governments” and “freedom of expression and of the press” are also essential for the democratic functioning of member states of the OAS. Despite widespread advances in the consolidation of democratic governance in the Americas, there remain deep and concerning challenges facing democracies throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, including— recurring incidents of significant electoral irregularities and manipulation; the extension and elimination of presidential term limits; the politicization of judicial systems and the expansion of executive powers and executive influence over the judiciary; corruption and a lack of transparency, which hinders integral development in addition to weakening democratic institutions; and misinformation and disinformation disseminated by foreign governments via traditional and digital media platforms that undermine faith in democratic institutions and elections.
Since 2016, there have been concerning levels of irregularities in several electoral processes throughout the Americas, including— the 2016 and 2021 general elections in Nicaragua; the 2017 general elections in Honduras; the sham 2017 constituent assembly, 2018 presidential, and 2020 national legislative elections in Venezuela; the 2019 presidential elections in Bolivia; and the 2020 general and regional elections in Guyana. The November 6, 2016, general elections in Nicaragua were characterized by severe democratic deficiencies, including widespread limitations on the participation of opposition candidates, and the November 7, 2021, general elections in Nicaragua were characterized by similar deficiencies, including the criminalization of the legitimate work of social organizations and political parties and the political imprisonment of potential opposition candidates, which consequently led the General Assembly of the OAS to pass a resolution approved by 25 countries declaring that the 2021 elections were not free, fair or transparent and have no democratic legitimacy .
Following the general elections in Honduras on November 26, 2017, the OAS Electoral Observation Mission reported that [t]he tight margin of the results, and the irregularities, errors and systemic problems that … surrounded [the] election [did] not allow the Mission to hold certainty about the results , leading Secretary General of the OAS Luis Almagro to subsequently issue a statement noting that the only possible way for the victor to be the people of Honduras is a new call for general elections .
The July 30, 2017, elections in Venezuela to establish a Constituent Assembly were widely derided as fraudulent by the international community, with Smartmatic, the company that supplied Venezuela’s voting machines, stating that the regime manipulated the results by more than 1,000,000 votes, and the May 20, 2018, presidential elections in Venezuela were similarly deemed to be fraudulent and illegitimate, leading the OAS to invoke the Charter and declare that the elections did not comply with international standards, permit the participation of all political actors, or satisfy conditions necessary to be considered a free, fair, transparent, and democratic process.
The Final Report of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission on the October 20, 2019, general election in Bolivia, Analysis of Electoral Integrity General Elections in the Plurinational State of Bolivia , found widespread and conclusive evidence of manipulation through secret computer servers with the capacity to modify the results and tally sheets, which made it impossible for the Mission to have confidence in the election results. In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections in Guyana, international observers from the OAS and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) unanimously agreed that there was no credible result from Guyana’s general and regional elections held on March 2, 2020, which were marked by flagrant tabulation irregularities .
Notwithstanding challenges in the region, several countries have held free and fair elections for heads of state since 2020, including the countries of Belize, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which serve as examples for other countries in the region on conducting democratic electoral processes. Transparency International’s seminal 2021 report indicates that corruption, bolstered by widespread impunity and attacks against the independence of the press and the judiciary, remains a significant challenge to human rights and democratic governance in the Americas, with the region making insufficient progress in combating corruption between 2011 and 2021.
Additional steps are needed to strengthen confidence in a free press in Latin America, given that a study from Vanderbilt University in 2018 shows that less than 1/2 of Latin Americans trust the press, down from 2/3 in 2004. The growing challenges of disinformation, misinformation, and digital election interference across the Americas, and their potential to sow social discord and lower public trust in democratic institutions, pose significant risks to democratic governance and the integrity of future elections.