The issue in Venezuela is not whether Nicolás Maduro won another term fairly or not. Neither the Lima Group of Latin American countries plus Canada, nor the United States or the European Union recognized the election as legitimate. The question is how to get rid of Mr. Maduro before he completes the destruction of his country.

The devastation he and his leftist firebrand predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, have visited on Venezuela is hard to fathom, especially as the country has the world’s largest oil reserves. For the fourth straight year, Venezuela has been ranked the world’s most miserable economy by Bloomberg. The economy has shrunk by more than 30 percent since the collapse of oil prices in 2014, and the oil industry is collapsing; the inflation rate is by far the world’s highest, set to reach 13,000 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

More than a million people have fled the country since 2015; the health care system is in such dire straits that malaria, once almost wiped out, is soaring; about three quarters of the population has involuntarily lost nearly 20 pounds of weight and people scrounging for food in garbage has become, according to the Brookings Institution, the new normal.

In the midst of this horror, the election on Sunday was less a contest than a dictator’s classic reach for a false patina of legitimacy. The largest opposition political parties were banned from taking part, key politicians were barred from running and there were widespread opposition calls for a boycott. In the end, the turnout was pathetically low, with Mr. Maduro garnering 68 percent of what votes were cast. Some of those who voted for Mr. Maduro apparently did so in the fear that their food rations would be stopped if they didn’t; others were the remaining Chavista faithful still loyal to the socialist upheavals led by Mr. Chávez from 1999 to his death in 2013 and by Mr. Maduro since.