Xavier Marquez is struck by the electoral parodies in many dictatorships — abuses of electoral rules and standards so blatant and obvious that they cannot be interpreted as anything other than mockery:
Here is a good example, from the Dominican Republic:
In 1941, as the new ally of the United States against the Axis Powers, Trujillo felt obliged to extend the democratic facade by creating and opposition party, and so the Trujillo party was formed. But Trujillo was the presidential candidate of both the new creation and his old official party. Under the Trujillo Party banner, he received 190,229 votes and as the candidate of the Dominican Party he polled 391,708; the total of both parties, 581,937, meant that Trujillo had again received 100 per cent of the vote (Wiarda, Dictatorship and Development: The Methods of Control in the Dominican Republic, p. 66.)
Others include such things as releasing the results of the election before it takes place, receiving 100% of the vote from more than 100% of the voters (another Trujillo specialty), declaring victory while failing to announce any vote totals, and so on. But my all-time favorite is this story, from Haiti. François “Papa Doc” Duvalier had been first elected to the Presidency in 1957 for a six year term in a rigged but reasonably competitive election, and had since consolidated his power. On 30 April 1961, there was a scheduled congressional election. Although Duvalier was not supposed to be on the ballot,
[f]ew voters considered it unusual that the name Dr François Duvalier was printed at the bottom of each and every ballot… Late that evening rumour spread that Duvalier — with two years to go on his current term — had declared himself reelected for an additional six years because his name had appeared on the ballot. On 4 May Attorney General Max Duplessis declared to the Electoral Board — called the Census Committee — that Duvalier indeed had been voted another term in office. Crowds were organized to collect before the palace and applaud this view.… In three days the Census Committee convened, agreed, declared President Duvalier re-elected, and announced that he received more than 1.3 million votes… The new legislature ratified the election (14 May 1961), and Duvalier responded: ’I accept the people’s will because being a revolutionary I do not have the right [not? sic] to hear the people’s voice (Diederich and Burt, Papa Doc: Haiti and its Dictator, pp. 169-170)
The sheer chutzpah of this “election” is a thing of beauty. Voters voted Duvalier into office without realizing that they had done so! He wasn’t supposed to even be up for election!
I always liked the Anschluss ballot.
An alternative explanation is cargo cultism. They are copying the west, having “elections”, but they don’t understand why elections have the procedures they do, so they feel free to alter the procedures willy-nilly.
The Haitian Attorney General and the Census Committee might have known that they were cheating, but maybe they were so stupid they didn’t realise?
I don’t think it’s mockery or cargo cultism.
The United States is a religious crusader pushing the religion of democracy. Want to run a third world country? Better get cracking on winning elections then.
The idea that you could lose an election if you control the government of a country is bizarre. You’ve got patronage networks, the police, the military, and the election administering apparatus.