Friday, October 11, 2013

Just Like Home

Elections in Louisiana are fun, and we've had our share of scoundrels, scandals, and hanky-panky.  However, the guys in Azerbaijan are making us look like pikers.  They've released the election results before the polls even opened.  Really!
Even still, one expects a certain ritual in these sorts of authoritarian elections, a fealty to at least the appearance of democracy, if not democracy itself. So it was a bit awkward when Azerbaijan's election authorities released vote results – a full day before voting had even started.
The vote counts – spoiler alert: Aliyev was shown as winning by a landslide – were pushed out on an official smartphone app run by the Central Election Commission. It showed Aliyev as "winning" with 72.76 percent of the vote. That's on track with his official vote counts in previous elections: he won ("won"?) 76.84 percent of the vote in 2003 and 87 percent in 2008.
Releasing the results before the polls open!  Brilliant!  Why didn't we think of that?

2 comments:

Goatwhiskers said...

Our last national election was almost that bad. I do know a couple of places where the dead are known to get up and vote, usually in alphabetical order, but this is the best I've ever heard of. GW

Gerry N. said...

Here in The People's Republic of Washington (State), my Dad was a life-long Republican, but he saw the light and has voted a straight Democrat ticket since the day he died.

Chicago has no monopoly on leftist corruption.

I'd like to know why it's always leftist. Anybody? Bueller?