Why do dictators hold "elections"—but rig them?

This weekend, there was an "election-style event" in Russia. What's the rationale for such obvious sham contests? And how can we prove they were rigged?

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From Name Doubles to Body Doubles

In 2021, voters in St. Petersburg went to cast their ballots in a municipal “election.” One of the main opposition candidates was named Boris Vishnevsky, a hopeful from the liberal Yabloko party.

But when voters got their ballots, they noticed something a bit strange. The ballot paper, as was standard practice, showed photos of the candidates. On this ballot, however, there were three nearly identical photos of three nearly identical men, all named Boris Vishnevsky.

Photo via The Guardian

Russian election-style events have previously featured “name doubles,” in which the regime finds people to change their name to match the opposition candidate’s name. The idea is ruthlessly clever: voters won’t know which candidate is the “real” one, so the vote will be split, causing the actual opposition leader to lose.

But with photos now appearing on the ballot, the name double strategy wouldn’t work. This time, they needed to find people who already looked like the candidate, get them to modify their appearance, and change their name to match the opposition leader. That’s precisely what they did. One of the fake Borises even shaved his head to appear more believable. (Needless to say, it works).

The Rise of “Election-Style Events”

You may have heard that Russia held an election this weekend. That’s not true. Vladimir Putin organized an “election-style event,” which involves the same charade of campaigning and parade of voting as actual elections, but with one key difference: this was voting without democracy.

To highlight the point, the European Union Council president Charles Michel congratulated Putin on his victory before the election began.

This raises the obvious question: why bother? If you’re going to murder your opponents, silence your critics, and muzzle the press, why even allow people to vote? Surely that’s just inviting an opportunity for opposition to rally against you. Wouldn’t it be wiser to just rule with an iron fist—with bullets, not ballots?

During the Cold War, most dictators didn’t bother holding elections—or held one-party contests that didn’t allow opposition candidates on the ballot. These were the 99.9 percent landslides, where there wasn’t even a pretense of competition. They were vanity events, nothing more.

But after the Cold War ended, the United States—and US allies—became the only geopolitical game in town. Countries that wanted to be aligned with the global superpower (or avoid running afoul of a more democratic global political system) would have to at least go through the motions of holding plausibly competitive elections.

Almost overnight, a global norm emerged: hold an election, or become an international pariah. The graph below shows the surge in national elections per year, from 30 a year in the wake of World War II to nearly 80 per year, over a relatively short time period. (2024 is the “year of elections” given how many people live in countries that are holding elections this year).

But that didn’t mean that the authoritarian leaders would allow genuine competition. Instead, from the early 1990s to 2024, there has been a steady process of authoritarian learning, in which despots figure out the tricks of the trade—often by swapping strategies—in order to hold elections but rig them. That way, they ensure that nobody truly challenges their iron grip on power.

There is, however, a more interesting set of reasons for why dictators like Vladimir Putin hold “election-style events.” And once you realize what they are, you’ll understand that they’re not just being rational, but savvy.

Nonetheless, none of them are clever enough to fully get away with it, and, as we’ll see, there are new mathematical techniques that can help expose methods of rigging that previously went undetected.