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Protestors packed the Michigan state capitol this month when electors gathered to cast their votes for president.

(The Associated Press)

Americans tend to believe their country's democracy is the envy of the world. But the Electoral Integrity Project, a research group run by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Australia's University of Sydney, has concluded that it needs work -- a lot of work.

The academic organization used a comprehensive survey and various other data to reach its conclusions. Find out more about its methodology.

Many American states, especially in the South, are barely more democratic than Cuba. Even those at the higher end of the group's new democracy ranking, including Oregon and Washington, have significant room for improvement in their electoral systems.

Gerrymandering is the chief culprit. The project calls the partisan tradition, in which state legislators draw congressional districts to guarantee results for one party, "the worst aspect of U.S. voting procedures."

Oregon scores 69 out of 100 in the Electoral Integrity Project's ranking of the states, putting it at 12th best in the country. Washington comes in at 7th on the list, with a score of 72. (Vermont takes the winner's trophy with a score of 75.) Most of the South scores in the 50s, in line with Cuba, Hungary, Indonesia and much of Africa.

Here's how Oregon's score breaks down:

Electoral laws: 54

Electoral procedures: 96

District boundaries: 35

Voter registration: 71

Party registration: 78

Media coverage 42

Campaign finance: 50

Voting process: 83

Vote count: 88

Results: 55

Electoral authorities: 89

As this list shows, there are plenty of problems beyond gerrymandering, including restrictive voting laws and the role of money in campaigns. The news media is also part of the problem. The Electoral Integrity Project highlights "the lack of substantive policy discussion during the [just-completed] campaign, the false equivalency standards of journalism, and the overwhelmingly negative tone of news coverage."

So none of us comes out of this smelling like a rose -- and the situation might be getting worse rather than better. Last week, in the wake of the legal putsch in North Carolina that saw the Republican legislature strip the incoming Democratic governor of various powers, University of North Carolina political scientist and democracy expert Andrew Reynolds declared that the Tar Heel State "can no longer call its elections democratic."

Seeing as anti-democratic maneuvers like gerrymandering are embraced by both major parties, more and more U.S. states could fall under that definition in the years ahead.

-- Douglas Perry