As an inevitable part of this, many people have questioned whether the democratic system of choosing leaders works properly anymore. Protests following election returns are common worldwide, not necessarily because people have stopped believing in the ideal but because they doubt that the count is accurate and the ballots are legitimate. Technology has not helped this problem but rather introduced more doubt.

This problem has massively afflicted the United States in recent years. There have been doubts at every point, not helped by a well-documented loosening of voting rules during the pandemic response (the CDC encouraged mail-in voting) and then after during a refugee wave that has disrupted many communities around the country. This is a serious problem: when people have doubts about such a core functioning of the system, there is a feeling of being caged in a machine only the elites control.

This is a major reason for the shock concerning election results. It’s not just that the Republicans swept the presidency and one if not both houses of Congress but also the popular vote, which no one really believed possible. The betting markets gave such an outcome very low odds.