** ADVANCE FOR USE SUNDAY, MARCH 20, 2011 AND THEREAFTER ** FILE - In this Wednesday, April 27, 1994 file picture, a long line of people snakes towards a polling station in the black township of Soweto, in the southwest suburbs of Johannesburg in the nation's first all-race elections. In 1994, Mandela was elected president of a multiracial South Africa. For almost 40 years, Freedom House think tank's New York researchers have annually assessed the state of democracy and associated freedoms, classifying nations in three categories _ free, partly free or not free. Almost half the world's nations were rated not free in 1972, but by 2010 that proportion had dropped below one-quarter. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell, File)