The Kremlin did not allow any strangers on the ballot, so the election did not need to be fixed. And still it was fixed. Ballot boxes were stuffed, numbers were doctored, phantom precincts reported, and conscripts were bused in to vote early and often. Not that it even mattered who got into parliament, which existed only to rubber-stamp the Kremlin’s policies. But the bad theater of it all, in which you were invited up onstage for a millisecond and not allowed to open your mouth, was insulting.
