It's the Brian Laird show on WNYc,

welcome.

It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Welcome back everybody. I'm Bridget Bergen, filling in for

Brian today. We all know this will be a very consequential election year in the United States,

but as it turns out more than 60

countries will hold national elections this year, according to the Washington Post

affecting some 4 billion people. We're talking about major countries in their regions like India, South Africa, the UK,

Taiwan, and of course the United States, and yet democracy itself is considered at stake in many of these votes.

The Post's Global Affairs columnist Ishan Thurer, who writes their newsletter called Today's

worldview, wrote that this year could be the greatest rolling spectacle of democracy in human history.

Ishaon, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thanks, good to be with you, Bridget.

And is it unusual for so many countries to hold elections in the same year?

It's unusual in the sense that the sheer scale of it as well as the fact that the countries we're talking about

Are some of the world's biggest and most populous nations like eight of the ten most populous countries in the world are having national elections this year and I think based on some

studies we won't see a year like this at least her current trends until say

2048 so this is a big year in elections.

There of course is a profound irony

that even as more adults are voting than ever before

or have the capacity to vote ever before, we feel this kind of pervasive sense that democracy

is more vulnerable than it's been in a long time.

Hmm. Well, listeners, we want your help to report this global story.

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