New Low in Election Fraud

Azerbaijan achieves a new low in electoral fraud: the government accidentally publishes the results of the election before the polls open.

The mistake came when an electoral commission accidentally published results showing a victory for Ilham Aliyev, the country’s long-standing President, a day before voting. Meydan TV, an online channel critical of the government, released a screenshot from a mobile app for the Azerbaijan Central Election Commission which showed that Mr Aliyev had received 72.76 per cent of the vote compared with 7.4 per cent for the opposition candidate, Jamil Hasanli. The screenshot also indicates that the app displayed information about how many people voted at various times during the day. Polls opened at 8am.

Here’s another article.

But luckily, former US legislators are monitoring everything:

But observers from other delegations, including a group of former members of the United States House of Representatives, said the voting on Wednesday was clean and efficient. Mr. Aliyev, thanking voters in a televised statement, called the elections “free and transparent.” Former Representative Michael E. McMahon, a Democrat from Staten Island, called the vote “honest, fair and really efficient.” “There were much shorter lines than in America, and no hanging chads” — a reference to the disputed ballots in the United States presidential race in 2000.

Long lines? Hanging chads? These people have no idea how the big boys steal elections.

Posted on October 11, 2013 at 12:33 PM • 31 Comments