Ideas for Democracy Edition 2020
Most read articles in Spanish in the first half of the year
Summer is almost here, and the editorial team decided to review the most read articles of these first months. Our content production capacity, as well as reader interest, increased as 2020 progressed. It is worth noting the inevitable extra attention that has been paid to the implications that the COVID-19 pandemic had, and will have for an indeterminate period of time, on all aspects of our lives. At Ideas for Democracy we tried to keep attention on the technical details and the solutions that can be provided to overcome these difficult times.
January 2020
We started the year with an eye to equal opportunities in exercising a fundamental right such as the right to vote. In an extensive analysis, the doctor in constitutional law Maria Garrote details the possibilities offered by the current Spanish legislation to help ensure that all citizens have equal opportunities to fulfill our responsibility to democracy. Demonstrating that there is still much to do, his article helped Ideas for Democracy start the year with a publication of the highest quality legal and political analysis that points to the work objectives for all of 2020. Link.
February 2020
In February, our readers turned to technology. The article on the possibility of holding elections using blockchain technology reached a huge number of visitors. Its activity in social networks was also very outstanding, since many of our readers shared in their networks this novel publication of our technology expert Pablo Sarrias. As advice for future reading, this article is part of a series that the author himself will be completing throughout the year, and in which he will go on to explain in different levels of detail the technologies that can be used today to improve voting systems. Link.
March 2020
The month of March was undoubtedly one of the most anomalous in recent history. We went from living in a quiet country with regular daily occupations for its inhabitants, to experiencing the incorporation of such a destabilizing factor as the massive arrival of COVID-19 infections within our borders. What until now was a threat that affected other territories, entered fully into our lives changing, at least, the horizon of what was left of the year. In these times of uncertainty, our readers mostly researched our historical publications, and raised to the top of the list a splendid article that Maria Barco, a security expert, wrote in February 2019. In this publication, Maria comments in detail on the security threats that democratic systems can suffer. There is no doubt that the uncertainty led our readers to investigate whether the foundations of our institutional structures were safe from possible attack. Link.
April 2020
April developed completely within the more or less extreme conditions of confinement. The high incidence of the pandemic at all levels forced the suspension of electoral processes throughout the planet. Spain was no exception, and the elections to the Galician and Basque regional parliaments, scheduled for Sunday 5 April, were suspended indefinitely. This suspension was a milestone in the short history of Spanish democracy, which had never experienced such a situation. In view of the doubts created, many of our readers decided to inform themselves through our platform. In his article entitled "Suspension of elections: an exceptional case", Ángel Sánchez Navarro, Professor of Constitutional Law, explained clearly and concisely the legal implications of this suspension and how the Spanish legal system was going to deal with this exceptionality. Link.
May 2020
Following the trail of the previous two months, our readers kept their attention on articles related to the incidence of COVID-19. In May, North Korea was one of the first countries to hold elections instead of suspending them. Attention was drawn to this publication, probably out of a mixture of curiosity and self-interest. In the article by the expert Javier García Colino, the need to continue to hold elections in some territories, as opposed to the decisions of others to postpone them, is discussed. In addition, it indicates all the measures that the Asian country put in place to prevent the spread of the disease and some of the technological additions that will help in the near future to be able to continue to hold elections with total security for the health of the voters. Link.
After this analysis, we take note of the major interests of our readers, and in the future we will try to continue to be successful in choosing topics to be dealt with from this platform of expansion of knowledge in a field as important as sometimes forgotten: the electoral processes. We must remember that democracy is so far the best of the systems that societies have been able to give ourselves, and that electoral processes are the sap that feeds it and keeps it healthy.
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