The people of Crimea have spoken. In yesterday’s referendum, they voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. According to Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency, the vote was 93 percent to 7 percent. According to Russia Today, it was 96 percent to 3 percent. It’s an amazing victory. Even more amazing when you consider that according to the most recent census, 37 percent of the Crimean population is ethnically Ukrainian or Tatar. Yet only 3 to 7 percent voted against leaving Ukraine and embracing Mother Russia. To be fair, it’s not quite as amazing as last week’s election in North Korea. There, beloved leader Kim Jong-in was re-elected to the parliament with 100 percent of the vote. The ruling party holds all 687 seats. And last year in Cuba, voters approved 100 percent of the national assembly candidates put forward by official nominating committees. How do exemplary democracies such as Russia, Cuba, and North Korea achieve these mandates? By rigging them, of course.
As Charles Krauthammer pointed out long ago, the fraudulence of an election is proportionate to the margin of victory. My colleague Joshua Keating recently updated this pattern with stellar vote shares from Azerbaijan (85 percent), Kazakhstan (91 percent), Belorussia (93 percent), Turkmenistan (97 percent), Syria (98 percent), and Chechnya (99 percent). In The Dictator’s Learning Curve, Slate’s William J. Dobson notes that smarter tyrants have learned to water down such ridiculous margins.
Last year’s official report on the Cuban election, published by the Communist Party news outlet, Granma, began this way:
The 612 candidates for deputies to the National Assembly of People’s Power and the 1,269 candidates for delegates to the 15 Provincial Assemblies of People’s Power, were elected on February 3, according to information given by Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, president of the National Electoral Commission (CEN), in a press conference. Once again, Cubans exercised their universal, free and democratic right to elect their representatives, she affirmed.
The first word in the story—“the”—explains the rest. In Cuba, no alternative candidates are on the ballot. You can vote for the official candidate, or you can vote against him and take your chances. Among the nearly 2,000 official candidates, not one was rejected. Same deal in North Korea.
In Crimea, the recipe for overwhelming victory was subtler. First, you narrow the ballot to two choices: joining Russia or increasing Crimea’s autonomy from Ukraine. You exclude the status quo. Then you saturate Crimea with 21,000 Russian troops and put armed men outside polling stations.
Full Article: Crimea referendum 2014: Russia’s margin of victory shows the election was rigged..