Jimmy Carter sought to expand democracy worldwide long after he left the White House

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Amid everything else on his desk — the Iran hostage crisis, domestic economic turmoil, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a grueling 1980 reelection fight — President Jimmy Carter elevated the independence of a country in southern Africa as a top agenda item.

Carter hosted then-Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe at the White House soon after his country achieved independence and later described Zimbabwe's adoption of democracy as “our greatest single success.”

Three decades later, Carter, who was long out of office, found the door slammed shut when he and other dignitaries sought to visit Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission to observe reported human rights abuses after a violent disputed election in 2008. He had become a critic of Mugabe’s regime and was denied a visa.

Carter didn’t give up. From neighboring South Africa, he relied on emissaries from Zimbabwe for testimony on violence and allegations of electoral fraud. The effort reflected the former president's long commitment to promoting democracy worldwide.

This “more than anything else cemented Carter’s legacy” as an advocate for free and fair elections across Africa, said Eldred Masunungure, a former political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.

“Carter didn’t change. Zimbabwe did. Mugabe swayed from the democratic ideals that Carter held so dear,” he said. “The incident demonstrates Carter’s consistency, the steadfastness.”

Zimbabwe’s evolution toward autocracy turned out to be the kind of scenario that the Carter Center has long sought to prevent by deploying observers and developing voting standards in countries struggling to form democracies.

Established in 1982, two years after Carter lost his bid for a second term, the center has been Carter's signature effort to promote fair elections as a vehicle for peace. It has sent observers to monitor some 125 elections in 40 countries and three tribal nations, and has been credited with helping expand democracy across the globe.

Carter’s “moral authority, the trust people put in him and the credibility of someone who had both won and lost an election” contributed to these successes, David Carroll, head of the center’s democracy program, told The Associated Press.

Carter, who died Sunday at 100, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for the center’s work supporting elections, promoting human rights and helping developing countries cultivate economic, social and public health institutions.

Its elections work began in Panama, where Carter became concerned about the 1989 elections after reports of armed militia members in civilian clothes confiscating voting records during the night.

The Carter Center had just decided to expand its mission of conflict resolution and human rights to include vote monitoring, concluding that democratic elections were essential to resolving political disputes.

“In my fumbling Spanish, I stood up on a table, and I denounced the election as fraudulent,” Carter recalled in a 2015 video marking the center’s 100th election observer mission. “There was later another election, which was honest and fair, and that was the birth of real democracy in Panama.”

The center also helped rescue a peace process in Nepal, then oversaw the country’s twice-postponed elections in 2008 to elect an assembly that would be tasked with writing a constitution. Carter made several trips to the South Asian nation, holding marathon negotiations with former rebels and top politicians to keep the peace process on track.

“There was deadlock in the country. Political parties were not sitting together, and there was no way out on how the process will move on,” said Bhojraj Pokharel, Nepal’s chief election commissioner in 2008, who later worked with Carter in Congo and Myanmar.

On Nepal's election day, Carter traveled to dozens of polling stations talking to voters. Polling was peaceful despite earlier fears of violence.

“His presence itself was a message to the Nepalese population 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 evaporated because of violence.

After Bolivia held elections in 2019 that the Organization of American States said were marred by fraud, the country’s electoral tribunal invited the Carter Center to observe elections the following year. The center deployed a team to Bolivia and later commended the country for elections it called impartial and transparent.

The Carter Center’s “evaluation was important not only for how the international community viewed us but also for how Bolivian society evaluated the electoral process,” said Salvador Romero, the tribunal’s president at the time.

Similar results have been difficult to obtain recently in Africa, where many countries emerging from decades of colonialism have seen forceful takeovers and disputed elections.

In Nigeria, Tunisia, Zambia and Ivory Coast, Carter Center observers noted violence, killings, vote-buying, uneven playing fields for political parties and candidates, and a general lack of trust in elections.

In Tunisia, frustration has replaced the wave of hope brought by the 2010 Arab Spring uprising. A new parliament was convened in March 2023, two years after President Kais Saied suspended parliament and started legislating by decree. The 11% turnout for parliamentary elections marked “a low point” for the country's democracy, The Carter Center said, and some election observer groups were denied accreditation for the October 2024 presidential contest.

At times, Carter personally intervened to keep African peace processes on track by trying to persuade warlords and rebels to support elections, rather than the use of force, in their quests for power.

In recent years, the Carter Center’s elections work turned toward the U.S.

Its teams deployed to Oklahoma in 2017 at the request of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes following elections plagued with problems. In 2013, ballots had been moved from office to office and stored without proper security, eroding confidence in the integrity of the vote. A recount then overturned the results, tribal Gov. Reggie Wassana said.

The Carter Center’s presence in the later election made “a huge difference, and it restored some faith among tribal members,” Wassana said.

Until 2020, the center tried to stay away from broader political issues in the United States, according to Carroll. But the center noticed threats to American democracy were increasing, which prompted a decision to expand programs within the U.S.

“If we saw the same conditions in another country that we were seeing in the U.S. — the lack of trust in election institutions, polarization and growing concern of political violence — it is exactly the kind of country we would prioritize to see if we could play a constructive role,” Carroll said.

Faith in U.S. elections, most notably among a large segment of Republican voters, eroded after the 2020 election amid former President Donald Trump's false claims that Democrats had rigged the vote. There was no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines in that election.

In the 2024 presidential election, which Trump won, the center did some limited observation in New Mexico, Montana and Fulton County, Georgia. In many U.S. states, election observers are limited to political party representatives, with no provisions for nonpartisan, independent groups. The center is working to change that.

Carter's leadership on democracy issues remains a north star for the center, Carroll said.

“You can help strong systems be in place, but they need to be watched continually. 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.

FILE - PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shakes hands with former President Jimmy Carter before their meeting at Arafat's office in Gaza City, on the eve of the first Palestinian elections, Jan. 19, 1996. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)

FILE - A volunteer election observer reviews training materials on Nov. 6, 2022, at the Carter Center in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jeff Amy, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, right, watch election workers prepare ballots at a polling station in Managua, Nicaragua, Feb. 25, 1990. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, background second right, former U.N. head Kofi Annan, background right, and Graca Machel, the wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, background second from left, watch children perform during a visit to the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nov. 23, 2008. The diplomats were barred entry into Zimbabwe on a humanitarian visit over the weekend. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, center, speaks with journalists and voting station authorities outside a polling station near Juba, southern Sudan, April 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Pete Muller, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter talks with the press upon his arrival in Georgetown, Guyana, Oct. 3, 1992, to monitor the elections on Oct. 5. (AP Photo/Diego Giudice, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter meets with Bhoj Raj Pokhrel, Nepal's chief election official, on April 8, 2008, in Katmandu, Nepal. (AP Photo/Ed Wray, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter stands in a polling station at San Miguelito, Panama, as part of an international delegation of observers under the Council of Freely-Elected Heads of Government on May 7, 1989. (AP Photo/Luis Romero, File)

FILE - The motorcade of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter passes a man praying in the street beneath an election poster for presidential candidate Khaled Ali during the election of a new president after the fall of ex-President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, May 23, 2012. (AP Photo/Thomas Hartwell, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, center, monitors voting at a polling station in Beirut's Christian sector of Ashrafieh, Lebanon, on June 7, 2009. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, second left, and Jennifer McCoy, third left, observe the voting process, while Joyce Grey, right, waits to cast her ballot at a polling station in Kingston, Jamaica, Oct. 16, 2002. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, right, former Botswanan President Ketumile Joni Masire, center, and former Tanzanian Prime Minister Joseph Warioba, fourth from right, address members of the media at a polling station at the university in Addis Ababa, during the third democratic elections in Ethiopia's 3,000-year history, May 15, 2005. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, center, visits a polling station in Katmandu, Nepal, on Nov. 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter speaks at a news conference in Katmandu, Nepal, on April 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)

FILE - Nigerian head of state Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar shakes hands with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter after a meeting at the Nigerian Presidential Villa in the capital Abuja, on Feb. 28, 1999. (AP Photo/Danny Wilcox Frazier, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, left, meets with Nicaraguan presidential candidate Daniel Ortega, of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Oct. 19, 1996, in Managua, Nicaragua. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

FILE - President Jimmy Carter meets with Zimbabwe Prime Minister Robert Mugabe in the Oval Office in Washington, on Aug. 27, 1980. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma, File)

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Days of unrelenting heavy rain and storms that killed at least 18 people worsened flooding as some rivers rose to near-record levels Monday and inundated towns across an already saturated U.S. South and parts of the Midwest.

Cities ordered evacuations and rescue crews in inflatable boats checked on residents in Kentucky and Tennessee, while utilities shut off power and gas in a region stretching from Texas to Ohio.

“I think everybody was shocked at how quick (the river) actually did come up,” said salon owner Jessica Tuggle, who was watching Monday as murky brown water approached her business in Frankfort, Kentucky, the state capital along the swollen Kentucky River.

She said that as each new wave of rain arrived over the weekend, anxious residents hoped for a reprieve so they could just figure out how bad things would get. She and friends packed up her salon gear, including styling chairs, hair products and electronics, and took it to a nearby tap house up the hill.

“Everybody was just ‘stop raining, stop raining’ so we could get an idea of what the worst situation would be,” she said.

Officials diverted traffic and turned off utilities to businesses in the city as the river was expected to approach a record crest Monday.

Ashley Welsh and her husband and four children had to quickly depart their Frankfort home along the river Saturday evening, leaving a lifetime of belongings later submerged by floodwaters.

When she awoke to water coming into their house early Saturday, Welsh woke everyone up and they packed their truck. They alerted guests to leave an Airbnb they own down the road, packed up the Airbnb and then helped her sister, who lives next to the Airbnb, evacuate. After they took a short nap at their house, the water had risen.

“By the time we woke up, there was already three feet of water that we had to wade through to get out,” she said.

They packed a suitcase and escaped from the rising water and went to a local hotel. One daughter carried two cats through water to safety and their black Labrador dog had to swim, as they stayed close to make sure no one got swept away.

The water rose up to their second floor. By Sunday morning, she checked her house's cameras.

“My stuff was floating around in the living room. I was just heartbroken. Our life is up there,” Welsh said.

The 18 reported deaths since the storms began on Wednesday included 10 in Tennessee. A 9-year-old boy in Kentucky was caught up in floodwaters while walking to catch his school bus. A 5-year-old boy in Arkansas died after a tree fell on his family’s home, police said. A 16-year-old volunteer Missouri firefighter died in a crash while seeking to rescue people caught in the storm.

The National Weather Service warned Sunday that dozens of locations in multiple states were expected to reach a “major flood stage,” with extensive flooding of structures, roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure possible.

In north-central Kentucky, emergency officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for Falmouth and Butler, towns near the bend of the rising Licking River. Thirty years ago, the river reached a record 50 feet (15 meters), resulting in five deaths and 1,000 homes destroyed.

The Kentucky River was cresting at Frankfort Lock at 48.27 feet (14.71 meters) on Monday morning, just shy of the record of 48.5 feet (14.78 meters) set there on Dec. 10, 1978, according to CJ Padgett, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Louisville, Kentucky, office. While other areas are in major flood stage, the forecasted crest for this location is closest to its record.

Carroll County Deputy Judge-Executive Michael Humphrey in Kentucky has ordered mandatory evacuations in some places, warning that a “significant flooding event of which history has never seen” is expected.

More than 100 structures were destroyed in McNairy County, Tennessee, where a tornado tore through the town of Selmer with winds estimated up to 160 mph (257 kph), local emergency management officials said. State officials have confirmed five people were killed by the severe weather in the county of roughly 26,100 residents.

The storms come after the Trump administration cut jobs at NWS forecast offices, leaving half of them with vacancy rates of about 20%, or double the level of a decade ago.

Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong winds and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.

The NWS said 5.06 inches (nearly 13 centimeters) of rain fell Saturday in Jonesboro, Arkansas — making it the wettest day ever recorded in April in the city. Memphis, Tennessee, received 14 inches (35 centimeters) of rain from Wednesday to Sunday, the NWS said.

Rives, a northwestern Tennessee town of about 200 people, was almost entirely underwater after the Obion River overflowed.

Domanic Scott went to check on his father in Rives after not hearing from him in a house where water reached the doorstep.

“It’s the first house we’ve ever paid off. The insurance companies around here won’t give flood insurance to anyone who lives in Rives because we’re too close to the river and the levees. So if we lose it, we’re kind of screwed without a house,” Scott said.

In Dyersburg, Tennessee, dozens of people arrived over the weekend at a storm shelter near a public school clutching blankets, pillows and other necessities. Just days earlier the city was hit by a tornado that caused millions of dollars in damage.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in New York; Kimberlee Kruesi and Jonathan Mattise, in Nashville, Tennessee; Sarah Brumfield in Cockeysville, Maryland; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Adrian Sainz in Memphis; Tennessee; Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Obed Lamy in Rives, Tennessee; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.

The rising Ohio River partially submerges the bronze statue of James Bradley along Riverside Drive, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Covington, Ky. Cincinnati and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge are seen across the Ohio River. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A Canadian goose swims in the rising Ohio River at the intersection of River Riverside Place and Ben Bernstein Place, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Covington, Ky., across the river from Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Carole Smith walks through her flooded home on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

Search and rescue firefighters carry a boat to a flooded neighborhood on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

A flooded neighborhood is seen on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

Road crews work to clear Lee County Rd. 681 in Saltillo, Miss, Sunday, April 6, 2025, of downed trees that blocked the road following the severe weather that passed through the area Saturday night. (Thomas Wells /The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP)

CORRECTS TO MICHAEL NOT MICHALE Michael Scott Memering looks out of his trailer after evacuating the Licking River RV Campground that was flooded by the rising waters of the Licking River, seen behind, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Falmouth, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Bill Jones pulls his boat ashore, filled with bottles of bourbon, from a flooded home near the banks of the Kentucky River on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

Search and rescue firefighters conduct wellness checks in a neighborhood on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

Abner Wagers stands near flooded homes in the rising waters of the Kentucky River in Monterey, Ky,. Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The flooded downtown area is seen on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

Search and rescue firefighters speak to a resident in a flooded neighborhood on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

A group of people survey damage at Pounders Mobile Home Park following a strong line of storms in the area in Muscle Shoals, Ala, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Dan Busey/The TimesDaily via AP)

Search and rescue firefighters conduct wellness checks in a neighborhood on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

Abner Wagers walks in the rising waters of the Kentucky River on a flooded Monterey Pike in Monterey, Ky., Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Abner Wagers, right, and Brayden Baker, both with the Monterey Volunteer Fire Department, walk in the rising waters of the Kentucky River near a flooded home in Monterey, Ky., Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

the rising waters of Cedar Creek and the Kentucky River overflow their banks, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Monterey, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)