Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev votes in Baku on Wednesday. (AFP/Getty Images) |
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.
The Azerbaijani Central Election Commission sent out these vote totals to its official smartphone app before voting started. (meydan.tv) |
The data were quickly recalled. The official story is that the app's developer had mistakenly sent out the 2008 election results as part of a test. But that's a bit flimsy, given that the released totals show the candidates from this week, not from 2008.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/oops-azerbaijan-released-election-results-before-voting-had-even-started/ for more on this story
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