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?
I guess I'm naive; I was born in the South and for decades believed in Christianity and a basic goodness in humanity. If someone tells me something, I strongly tend to believe him.
Thus it is that I can't understand someone like Putin: How could anyone, ever be so duplicitous? It's beyond comprehension: How does he live with himself? My guilty conscience would punish me night and day, and I believe, to this day, that others would suffer the same fate.
But, obviously, there are way too many people who can perform the most devious of deeds yet sleep very well at night in their palaces. How can that even be!
I simply don't understand the full spectrum of humanity, as perhaps Freud, with his gloomy outlook on people, did. So it's good for everyone that a person like myself is not empowered in a public office dealing with law, crime, justice, etc. I could, however, handle the clerical department or something, where I'd be a square peg in a square hole.
Why wouldn’t the people rigging the numbers just use a random number generator to stop the pattern of whole integer values showing up in the statistics? I mean, besides the fact that they probably just don’t care.
Good and informative as ever. Thanks also for pointing to “How to rig an election”. The Rwanda plan in the UK is almost unbelievably execrable. I am familiar with number bias in fraudulent science but hadn’t generalised this to political science. Always instructive.
I truly HATE to sound like a conspiracy theorist, and my interest is more academic but has anyone looked at the numbers in the US election? It might have been an artifact of things the newspaper did with the map and not the actual vote tallies but it was very weird, visually. All counties surrounding each moving 5% toward Trump between 2020-2024? Exactly 5%? County by county? I understand that numbers can do weird things, of course. Reality does weird things all the times so if you measuring it, who can say. But I found that exceedingly strange. I question the idea of tampering, since how would they do that? Unfortunately, I do not have the wherewithal or the background to look into this deeper. But I was very curious if nobody did or if either my brain was addled or the newspaper was being sloppy. And of course, they have checked by now, I assume? (Someone I was close to died so I wasn’t paying much attention for awhile.)
Fascinating discussion. Do these sham elections usually involve a secret ballot? If so, are there mechanisms that the regime can use to pierce the secrecy? In other words, are opposition VOTERS (as opposed to candidates) at risk by voting?
Yes, great question. Sometimes there are soldiers who monitor voting, but that risks international condemnation. So the clever ones come up with smarter ways to verify voting has been done “correctly.” In one instance, the election ballot involved a separate paper for each party, and you leave the ballot of the party you wanted to vote for in the envelope. In that instance, the ruling party threw a big concert with the leading pop star the night of the election, in which the “ticket” was the opposition’s ballot paper, proving you didn’t vote for them. In other instances, vote buying gets verified as they make the voter pretend to be disabled such that they can make a voice vote, and the henchman listens nearby — and then pays up. There’s an endless supply of these sorts of tactics.
Thanks Brian for writing this. Really insightful and detailed discussion on how authoritarians adjust and adapt to keep their power.
Just subscribed and just had the answer to a long-running question mapped out for me.
Thank you!
"election-style event" is a gorgeous addition to the Dictionary of Orwellspeak.
Borges would well appreciate that story of 3 men with the same name competing to win a Special Electoral Operation ( some putinspeak back at ya).
Once the utterly impossible is staged a few times, people begin to regard it as unexceptional.
'Only the weak insist on Truth'
I guess I'm naive; I was born in the South and for decades believed in Christianity and a basic goodness in humanity. If someone tells me something, I strongly tend to believe him.
Thus it is that I can't understand someone like Putin: How could anyone, ever be so duplicitous? It's beyond comprehension: How does he live with himself? My guilty conscience would punish me night and day, and I believe, to this day, that others would suffer the same fate.
But, obviously, there are way too many people who can perform the most devious of deeds yet sleep very well at night in their palaces. How can that even be!
I simply don't understand the full spectrum of humanity, as perhaps Freud, with his gloomy outlook on people, did. So it's good for everyone that a person like myself is not empowered in a public office dealing with law, crime, justice, etc. I could, however, handle the clerical department or something, where I'd be a square peg in a square hole.
No doubt Donald Trump, as he did after Putin’s last “election,” will call the dictator to congratulate him.
Why wouldn’t the people rigging the numbers just use a random number generator to stop the pattern of whole integer values showing up in the statistics? I mean, besides the fact that they probably just don’t care.
Because they're not that smart. Dictators think about this stuff; henchmen don't, and the henchmen often do the dirty work at the precinct level.
Good and informative as ever. Thanks also for pointing to “How to rig an election”. The Rwanda plan in the UK is almost unbelievably execrable. I am familiar with number bias in fraudulent science but hadn’t generalised this to political science. Always instructive.
I truly HATE to sound like a conspiracy theorist, and my interest is more academic but has anyone looked at the numbers in the US election? It might have been an artifact of things the newspaper did with the map and not the actual vote tallies but it was very weird, visually. All counties surrounding each moving 5% toward Trump between 2020-2024? Exactly 5%? County by county? I understand that numbers can do weird things, of course. Reality does weird things all the times so if you measuring it, who can say. But I found that exceedingly strange. I question the idea of tampering, since how would they do that? Unfortunately, I do not have the wherewithal or the background to look into this deeper. But I was very curious if nobody did or if either my brain was addled or the newspaper was being sloppy. And of course, they have checked by now, I assume? (Someone I was close to died so I wasn’t paying much attention for awhile.)
This leads me to ask a question, Brian.
Why do people even bother to turn up to vote when it’s so obviously rigged?
Fear, mostly.
Fascinating discussion. Do these sham elections usually involve a secret ballot? If so, are there mechanisms that the regime can use to pierce the secrecy? In other words, are opposition VOTERS (as opposed to candidates) at risk by voting?
Yes, great question. Sometimes there are soldiers who monitor voting, but that risks international condemnation. So the clever ones come up with smarter ways to verify voting has been done “correctly.” In one instance, the election ballot involved a separate paper for each party, and you leave the ballot of the party you wanted to vote for in the envelope. In that instance, the ruling party threw a big concert with the leading pop star the night of the election, in which the “ticket” was the opposition’s ballot paper, proving you didn’t vote for them. In other instances, vote buying gets verified as they make the voter pretend to be disabled such that they can make a voice vote, and the henchman listens nearby — and then pays up. There’s an endless supply of these sorts of tactics.