Elections can be strange things. They do not guarantee democratic government, because they can be fixed. Consider 2000, when Republican thugs physically assaulted campaign workers in Florida to delay the recount, so Republican ideologues on the Supreme Court could deliver the White House to the loser. Consider 2004 when voting machines with no paper trails counted more votes than districts had voters in hundreds of places. In virtually all cases the divergence between the vote count and exit polls were favored Republicans. The odds against so many instances favoring one party so exclusively occurring through random error asymptotically approach infinity. Human intervention was needed to produce those results. Republicans fired US Attorneys who refused to assist them in fixing elections. Even in 2006, there was a 4% divergence between actual vote count and exit polls, favoring Republicans. As horrific as this is, it does not approach the injustice it could become.

The proxy party of Myanmar’s military rulers has been increasing pressure on voters ahead of Sunday’s elections, opposition party officials said, raising fresh worries about the junta’s promised “roadmap to democracy.”

Officials with the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party have told voters they could lose their jobs if they don’t vote for military-supported candidates, and punished voters who cast early ballots for other parties, the opposition leaders said Saturday.

In Yangon, the country’s largest city, there was little fanfare on the eve of the balloting, with many voters expressing apathy about elections they said had already been orchestrated by the ruling generals.

“This will just be the same old wine with a new label,” said Soe Myint, a 65-year-old retired Yangon schoolteacher, adding that she would not cast a ballot.

Thu Wai, chairman of the Democratic Party (Myanmar), said his party had filed a string of complaints against the USDP for campaign violations. “We will press the election commissions to take actions against these improper practices,” he said as he made a last-minute campaign tour through Yangon.

The military, which has ruled Myanmar with an iron hand since 1962, has billed the elections as a key step in its “roadmap to democracy.”

Critics have widely panned the balloting, the country’s first in two decades, as a sham designed to cement military rule. But some in Myanmar — also known as Burma — are holding out hope that they could mark the beginning of a slow democratic transition.

The main opposition party, detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, has refused to take part in the polls, saying the process is unfair and undemocratic. It has been disbanded by the government as a result.

The festive mood ahead of the last elections in 1990 — which were overwhelmingly won by Suu Kyi’s party, which was barred from taking power — was nowhere to be seen Saturday… [emphasis added]