Russia’s farce election sums up a grim moment in global democracy

Vladimir Putin’s landslide election victory was pre-ordained, and came in at 87%. Even then, exiled watchdog groups reported episodes of ballot-stuffing, voter intimidation at some polling stations and other attempts at manipulation, including the alleged busing of Putin supporters to vote multiple times at different locations. In areas of Ukraine occupied and illegally annexed by Russia, observers recounted how local authorities coerced people to participate in the election at “gunpoint”.

Thousands of Russians in big cities attempted to make their displeasure known at both the nature of Putin’s regime and the ongoing war in Ukraine by going to vote at noon on Sunday. Many spoiled their ballots.

On a global scale, the need for such sentiments is becoming more necessary. The bumper year of elections worldwide in 2024 comes at a moment of “democratic recession”.

A new study this month from the V-Dem Institute, a leading centre for the analysis of comparative politics at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, found 35 countries witnessing a decline in free and fair elections. In 2019, the number was only 16.

V-Dem found that governments in 24 countries are increasingly undermining integrity in elections and casting doubt over the independence of the commissions that conduct them.

“The erosion of election quality is particularly alarming as elections can either reinforce or counteract the autocratisation trend,” the institute noted. “Of over 60 countries holding national elections this year, 31 are worsening on their democracy levels, while only three are improving.”

In V-Dem’s analysis, the greatest source of concern is India, where the ruling Hindu nationalists under PM Narendra Modi look set to tighten an already outsize grip on power in upcoming elections. Some 42 countries are “autocratising,” according to V-Dem, and 71% of the world’s population now lives in autocracies – up from 48% just a decade ago.

These findings dovetail with a gloomy Pew survey published last month. In polls put to respondents in a spread of 24 countries, researchers found growing interest in alternatives to rule by elected officials, including an embrace of technocracy or even an autocratic strongman.

Dictatorship or military rule, though, is not popular. – Washington Post

At the Russian Embassy in Berlin, a man casts a ballot into a shredder in a mock version of Russian elections as an effigy of Russian President Vladimir Putin bathes in Ukrainian blood.