Fraudulent Elections: A Look at Russia, Iran and Nigeria

In the midst of the prevalence of democratic transitions, a number of developing countries are seeking to achieve the successful consolidation of civil order in modern days. Among those participants, Mexico and Nigeria has been spotlighted for the completely contrastive endings at the end of their long-adventures towards democratization since their independence; Mexico, from its independence, has maintained the political stability despite the authoritarian single-party regime and even accomplished the solid democratization at the time of the 2000 election whereas Nigerian regime has been deteriorated by a series of military cues d’états and

Elections are an important event in any government because, It is through that process that the leader of the country is selected. Therefore it must be done under top security, however that is not always the case. The artist uses real life connection ,logos and ethos to develop an effective argument that vote buying still exist which infers to the idea that elections are rigged nowadays. Elections,like I previously said are of paramount importance. When we think of it , we more often than not believe that they are processed in the most legal and most equitable circumstances.

Not long after the 2008 Presidential election, a documentary came to light that shed an insight on how much fraud that was committed in the 2008 election by the Democratic Party, allegations that never made into the main stage of mainstream media reporting, basically, largely ignored.

America and Haiti are both democratic states but one is often viewed as the poster child for democracy- while the other’s democracy is on the verge of collapsing. While Corruption and politics goes hand in hand the systematic structure set within political systems is what differentiates a legitimate state from a failed or weak state . In countries where the political system have been successful in seamlessly integrating itself into the society, by providing for its citizens, politics goes unnoticed. In instances where the state failed to provide the basic necessities for its people , politics is a matter of life or death, it no longer becomes a matter of

This research relies heavily on theoretical data especially in relation to elections taking place in the nineteenth century. Because of this one might question the validity and reliability of the conclusions. The sources I used to reach those conclusions are qualitative and they aim to understand why the elections have turned out the way they ultimately did. Some numerical data exists for the 2000 election and I will utilize those figures in relation to that election to explore corruption. While the information will be helpful in further understanding one election it will not be when comparing all elections.

The Republic of Niger, a poor, landlocked country, located in the heart of Sub-Saharan West Africa. Niger has seen its fair share of change throughout the decades; moving away from the control of the French Parliament in 1960, Niger formally declared its independence. Despite this bold act of independence, Niger would not see its first steps towards democracy until the early 1990’s, when they held their first open election as a free state. However, even with the empowerment of the people in a democratic government, Niger has seen itself nearly torn apart as a result constant coups, that have occurred as recently as 2010. Such instability has led to incredulous amounts of corruption and poverty, within the Niger government. This lack of stability and constant turnover in government, has been a driving factor behind the lack of resources available for education in Niger.

There has been claims that the Russia hacked the U.S 2016 presidential election and Putin personally gave the order. This might be possible because of the rivalries between the two countries since the Cold War. The two countries has long history to outshine each other. There is no relationship between the two countries before the World War II, but both countries united against the Nazis. After the war, there has been competition between the two countries on who can perform better in field of science and technology. The two countries wanted other countries to follow and live by their ideologies. The rivalry between the countries doesn’t just evolved during the 2016 presidential election, but has

In the case that politicians do not live up to the ideals and criteria they were chosen for, a merit of democracy is that it allows the citizenry to punish these officials – not necessarily through extreme forms like impeachment, but perhaps by simply electing someone else in the forthcoming election. While, as previously addressed, not all participants in the election process vote based on truthful information, some citizens do. It must be remembered that not only those in authority

150). Democracy is supposed to be about equal opportunity but when bribery is brought into the balance it disrupts the scale to tip the scales into the favor of the politicians which goes against the principle of democracy (“Rise of Democracy”, para. 1). In the majority of Latin American countries there is a system called “compulsory voting” which makes it illegal not to vote. Although it is illegal not to vote, in Brazil’s case, only 78.90% of eligible voters voted for the presidential campaign in 2014 (“Voter Turnout”, para. 3). While there is a huge amount of corruption in Latin America, it can be overcome. In September of 2015, a crowd of Guatemalans chanted at President Otto Perez Molina, “Resign, now.” Their voice was heard as the ex-Guatemalan president stood down from office and is now in prison awaiting trial over an alleged corruption scandal (Watson, p.1, para. 1-3). This is just a glimpse of the power the people can hold. If the voters can get a current president out of office than imagine what can happen if everyone were to vote for who they truly believe is worthy of representing and governing the country.

From Mubarak’s term lasting 29 years, elections in Egypt are pseudo-democratic. He and his party maintain their power by force but rationalize their rule with pseudo-democratic arguments. In the years 2005 and 2008, elections were held, but the party often nominated or approved only one candidate. In 80% of the contests, the NDP’s candidates ran unopposed. Moreover, the regime had cracked down hard on his opponents, so that it was difficult to register or campaign; this lack of opposition led to a low voter turnout which was estimated at only 3%. Nour experienced to evidence Mubarak’s political intimidation. He took part in the elections and strongly condemned Mubarak’s pseudo-democratic government; Mubarak created trumped-up charges against Nour so that his

It is clear that a lot of people did not want to put up with the constant down spiralling because of the autocracy, many people decided to rise against the situation. These people were split between the reformers and a smaller group of revolutionaries. The reformers, or Liberals, wanted to modernise Russia gradually.They wanted free elections, more education for the people and no censorship. The revolutionaries, on the other hand, wanted to throw out the whole tsarist system and build a different one.Revolutionaries were the ones waiting for the perfect moment to strike the match since the autocratic regime had caused a long term fatigue in the society - the long term situation let them was highly in favour of this group in terms of revolution, only a slight push to the angered people was needed to proceed.

In 1994, The Republic of Belarus elected Alexander Lukashenko as the President of Belarus. He was officially reelected in 2001, 2006 and 2010. However, the United States (as well as other western Nations) does not recognize the results of the 2010 elections under which the Central Election Commission of Belarus declared Lukashenko president. This is because Western countries decried the election as a farce and an egregious affront to democracy and human rights. Many of Lukashenko’s opposition leaders had mysterious disappearances. The United States and the European Union called for the release of all imprisoned former candidates, but took no further action except a travel ban on Lukashenko. By contrast, countries such as Syria, Russia, and China congratulated the re-elected incumbent. This is just a sample of the Dictatorship that is veiled as a Republic in Belarus.

However, a regime is no longer democratic the moment it violates at least one of the norms that make elections democratic, hence the name electoral authoritarianism. Furthermore, there are intrinsic powers of representative institutions in driving the dynamic of stability and change in such regimes. Thus, there is motivation for rulers to manipulate them and gain electoral legitimacy without bearing the risks of democratic uncertainty. The manipulative tactics used by authoritarians to repress are assumed to render electoral authoritarian regimes more resilient. The article also assumes the manipulation of representative institutions to create imperfectly informed citizens are identified as more authoritarian than

Since the initiation of the Third Wave of Democracy, several countries have attempted to form a democratic system of governs. We take note that not all have succeeded. At the dawn of this era, democracy was being applied to countries with no prior history of a governing body that was place by the people for the people hence success of such a system could not be guaranteed because of the innumerous variables that existed in each country. People being the highlighted factor of variance, it may become easier to understand how countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria, both countries prior to the Wave had no local governing machinery. Pakistan further endured a partition from India which resulted in not only an instant religious and

Confidence in an electoral system translates into confidence in a democracy. It is generally agreed that elections will hardly be completely free and fair. But a country must be satisfied that election results reflect the will of the people. This means that even where there are malpractices in some constituencies or regions the overall result is what the people, voting as a whole, intend it to be. This was the conclusion of election observers in Jamaica’s last elections even while the electoral process fell short of the standards of fairness.