The idea that voting somehow gives automatic birth to democracy is not only a myth, but a dangerous one at that. A vote is but the beginning of democracy. In fact, even the word “democracy” gets tossed about promiscuously even here in the United States. Many conservatives are quick to assert that we actually live in a Republic.

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Certainly, no one who favors freedom should ever discount the critical importance of the individual’s right to vote. However, the act, when it brings forth theocracies or elects dictators or enemies of peace, does not automatically translate to democracy simply because a democratic process occurred. It should also be remembered that Adolph Hitler was in fact elected to office in a free and democratic election.

We have now learned that the results in the Palestinian elections did not bring forth what many would like to call a democracy, and the declarations of the winning side to be an even greater terrorist state in the already explosive Middle East.

It should also be remembered that, even when the Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence — and for generations afterward — the idea of “one person, one vote” still did not exist even as the American democracy blossomed. It took a Constitutional amendment to make it possible for women to vote.

It took powerful effort to help African Americans gain the right to vote without the humiliation of Jim Crow laws.

So, ultimately, voting just begins the march to democracy. In the cases of numerous nations, principally in the Middle East, it is more a stumble than a realistic step toward freedom. Many cultural realities stifle real freedom as in the case of certain Muslim countries where religion rather than democratic rights and privileges rule the day.

Certainly then-newly victorious Palestinian Hamas party hardly permitted the kinds of freedoms that exist in the United States or its unconditionally declared target for destruction, Israel.

In the end, all political propaganda about how courageous voters in Iraq and elsewhere have made their ways to the ballot boxes and have their fingers dipped hardly defines the future for democracy unless those who oppose the victors in elections are also granted the freedom to protest and gain redress for restraints on their freedom.

Now, with our recent American experiment in Democracy and the election of the most conflicted president in history, it remains to be seen how President-elect Trump will respect the fragile but long established Constitutional values that test the rights of freedom of speech, assembly and other realities that make him and others both uncomfortable and willing to punish those who practice their rights.

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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.