HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Amid everything else on his desk — the Iran hostage crisis, economic turmoil at home, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a grueling re-election campaign in 1980 — President Jimmy Carter claimed independence country in southern Africa became a top topic on the agenda.
Carter received then-Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe at the White House shortly after his country’s independence and later described the introduction of democracy in Zimbabwe as “our greatest single success.”
Three decades later, Carter, long out of office, found the door slammed when he and other dignitaries planned to visit Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission to address reported human rights abuses after a violent, disputed election in 2008 observe. He had become a critic of the Mugabe regime and was refused a visa.
Carter didn’t give up. From neighboring South Africa, he relied on envoys from Zimbabwe for statements on violence and election fraud allegations. The effort reflected the former president’s longstanding commitment to promoting democracy worldwide.
This “more than anything cemented Carter’s legacy” as a champion of free and fair elections across Africa, said Eldred Masunungure, a former political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.
“Carter hasn’t changed. Zimbabwe did it. “Mugabe has turned away from the democratic ideals that Carter held so dear,” he said. “The incident shows Carter’s consistency, his fortitude.”
Zimbabwe’s slide toward autocracy proved to be a scenario that the Carter Center has long sought to prevent by sending observers and developing electoral standards in countries struggling to form democracies.
Founded in 1982, two years after Carter lost his bid for a second term, the center’s primary focus was to promote fair elections as a means to peace. It has sent observers to monitor some 125 elections in 40 countries and three tribal nations and is credited with helping to expand democracy around the world.
Carter’s “moral authority, the trust that people placed in him and the credibility of someone who had both won and lost an election” contributed to those successes, David Carroll, director of the center’s democracy program, told The Associated Press.
Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for the center’s work supporting elections, promoting human rights and helping developing countries build economic, social and public health institutions.
His election work began in Panama, where Carter became concerned about the 1989 election after reports of armed militiamen in plain clothes seizing voting materials at night.
The Carter Center had just decided to expand its mission of conflict resolution and human rights to include election monitoring, concluding that democratic elections were indispensable to resolving political disputes.
“In my fumbling Spanish, I stood on a table and denounced the election as fraudulent,” Carter recalled in a 2015 video marking the center’s 100th election observation mission. “Later there was another election that was honest and fair, and that was the birth of a true democracy in Panama.”
The center also helped salvage a peace process in Nepal and then oversaw the country’s twice-delayed elections in 2008 to elect an assembly that would be tasked with drafting a constitution. Carter made several trips to the South Asian country and held marathon negotiations with former rebels and top politicians to keep the peace process on track.
“There was a standstill in the country. The political parties were not sitting together and there was no way out as to how the process would proceed,” said Bhojraj Pokharel, Nepal’s chief election commissioner in 2008, who later worked with Carter in Congo and Myanmar.
On election day in Nepal, Carter traveled to dozens of polling stations and spoke to voters. The elections were peaceful despite earlier fears of violence.
“His presence itself was a message to the Nepali people and voters about the integrity of the election,” Pokharel said.
The Carter Center often works in countries with little or no experience in representative government and where trust has all but disappeared because of violence.
After Bolivia held elections in 2019 that the Organization of American States said were marred by fraud, the country’s electoral court invited the Carter Center to observe the following year’s elections. The center sent a team to Bolivia and later praised the country for the elections, which it described as impartial and limpid.
The Carter Center’s “assessment was important not only for the way the international community viewed us, but also for how Bolivian society assessed the electoral process,” said Salvador Romero, the tribunal’s president at the time.
Similar results have been complex to achieve recently in Africa, where violent takeovers and disputed elections have occurred in many countries emerging from decades of colonialism.
In Nigeria, Tunisia, Zambia and Ivory Coast, Carter Center observers found violence, killings, vote buying, an uneven playing field for political parties and candidates, and a general lack of confidence in elections.
In Tunisia, frustration has replaced the wave of hope brought by the 2010 Arab Spring uprising. A modern parliament was convened in March 2023, two years after President Kais Saied suspended parliament and began legislating by decree. The 11% voter turnout in the general election represented “a low point” for the country’s democracy, the Carter Center said, and some election monitoring groups were denied accreditation for the October 2024 presidential race.
At times, Carter personally intervened to keep African peace processes on track by trying to persuade warlords and rebels to support elections rather than violence in their quest for power.
In recent years, the Carter Center’s election work has focused on the United States
His teams were deployed to Oklahoma in 2017 at the request of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes after problems plagued the election. In 2013, ballots were transported from office to office and stored without adequate security, undermining confidence in the integrity of the vote. A recount then overturned the results, said tribal governor Reggie Wassana.
The Carter Center’s presence in the later elections “made a big difference and restored some trust among tribal members,” Wassana said.
According to Carroll, until 2020 the center tried to stay away from broader political issues in the United States. However, the center found that threats to American democracy were increasing, leading to the decision to expand programs within the United States
“If we were to see the same conditions in another country as we see in the United States – lack of trust in electoral institutions, polarization and growing concerns about political violence – that would be exactly the kind of country we would prioritize if we could play.” a constructive role,” Carroll said.
Confidence in U.S. elections, particularly among a immense portion of Republican voters, waned after the 2020 election due to former President Donald Trump’s false claims that Democrats rigged the vote. There was no evidence of widespread fraud or tampering with voting machines in this election.
In the 2024 presidential election, which Trump won, the center conducted narrow monitoring in New Mexico, Montana and Fulton County, Georgia. In many US states, election observers are narrow to representatives of political parties and have no provisions for non-partisan, independent groups. The center is working to change that.
Carter’s leadership on democracy issues remains a north star for the center, Carroll said.
“They can help ensure strong systems are in place, but they need to be continually monitored. You can never rest on your record on democracy and elections. You always have to be vigilant and keep an eye on the process,” he said.
___ Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia; Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Nepal; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; and Daniel Politi in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.
