Zeb Smathers, shows a ballot to his 4-year-old son, Stone Smathers, while voting on Nov. 5 in Canton, N.C.

For the new year, you might have resolved to give up booze or bonbons.

Maybe you should join me in giving up elections instead.

Or, at the very least, in giving up the habit of investing money, time and hope that elections might improve our communities and our world.

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Because democracy and elections, often used as synonyms, are two very different things. That was the central lesson of 2024, the biggest election year in history. More than half of humanity, 4 billion of us, lived in the more than 70 countries that held elections in 2024. Hopes were high that 2024 would be a year of greater democracy and positive change.

Instead, the Year of Elections boosted autocracies, inspired violence, hamstrung governments, frustrated publics, and ultimately damaged democracy.

“Our obsession with elections is killing democracy,” wrote Josh Lerner, co-executive director of the global democracy hub People Powered, in Boston Review. “We pour billions of dollars into elections, but … most people don’t believe that elections are delivering actual democracy — government by and for the people — and they’re right.”

In many countries, 2024 elections were merely tools of oppression. Freedom House, a Washington D.C., non-profit, found 22 contests in which incumbents attempted to jail or disqualify opponents. In at least 16 elections, Freedom House found, “voters had no real choices at the ballot box” because of electoral manipulation. And violence was a major factor in 26 of the 62 elections that Freedom House monitored; election workers faced violent attacks in 12 contests.

Assassination campaigns targeted candidates for local office in Mexico and........

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