The Elected Autocrat: Why Rigged Elections Matter

Photo: YASSINE MAHJOUB/AFP via Getty Images
On September 7, Algeria’s National Independent Election Authority (ANIE) announced that incumbent president Abdelmadjid Tebboune won reelection with an overwhelming 94.7 percent of the vote. The landslide victory surprised no one in a country where elections are a formality and there exists little space for independent political expression. But rather than affirming his victory, Tebboune instead joined the opposing campaigns in denouncing the results as riddled with “inaccuracies, contradictions, ambiguities and inconsistencies” after the ANIE reported low turnout numbers.
Authoritarian rulers do not need elections, but they often have them. Even in closed political systems, elections can be useful—rulers can use them to distribute resources, monitor grievances, and establish a veneer of international legitimacy. Elections, nonetheless, present a risk to authoritarian regimes. In July, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro declared victory in the third presidential election since he rose to power after barring frontrunner María Corina Machado from running for office. But after protests erupted following accusations of fraud, he claimed the National Electoral Council suffered a “criminal cyber-fascist coup d’etat” and refused to publish the final ballot count. Because authoritarian elections are performative, they reflect important information about the concerns and weaknesses of these regimes. Yet the United States and its allies too often opt to ignore authoritarian elections, even when they expose new avenues to push for greater accountability and political reform.
Algeria
Algeria’s closed civic space presents many challenges for reform. The political process has long been marked by the military’s tight control of elections, repression of opposition groups, and claims of electoral fraud and manipulation. For years, the regime has dissolved oppositional and independent groups, detained activists and human rights defenders, and tied itself closer to the military. In the face of mass protests in 2019, former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned, but the regime subsequently cracked down on public protests and activism.
But new cracks have emerged in the regime’s efforts to manage dissent. Algerians have recently engaged in rare public demonstrations to protest their lack of access to water during the country’s severe drought and have criticized the government’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests since October 7. This emergent dissent helps to explain Tebboune’s reported fixation on promoting election turnout and his campaign’s focus on economic issues. Western countries play a key role in this dynamic, as Algeria increasingly seeks to expand ties with the United States while positioning itself as a key energy partner with Europe.
This expansion of relations is crucial for Europe, which has increasingly relied on Algerian energy since the war in Ukraine. But Tebboune’s reaction to the election turnout numbers suggests that Western officials underestimate the political pressure Tebboune is under to at least gesture at reform. But rather than use this leverage to push for change—whether more equitable economic policies or new protections for political expression—the United States merely congratulated Algeria on another successful election.
Venezuela
The electoral landscape in Venezuela has also been closing at a rapid pace since Maduro rose to power. Maduro’s history of fraudulent elections dates to his first time on the ballot. After being appointed by Hugo Chávez as his heir in 2013, Maduro barely won the election with 50.7 percent—a result the Venezuelan opposition has contested. Year after year, Maduro’s efforts to steal elections increased with his unpopularity, and he increased his repression tactics by barring opposition candidates from voting and intimidating voters via colectivos (armed paramilitary groups that commit acts of violence on behalf of the regime).
The 2024 election was a test for Maduro’s antidemocratic machine. After years of decreased turnout and a fiercely divided opposition, María Corina Machado rallied multisectoral support and won the opposition’s primary with 93 percent of the vote. Maduro’s choice to bar her and her replacement from running energized her supporters, who voted for Edmundo González Urrutia, a little-known diplomat also chosen by Machado. The key difference between this and previous elections was the overwhelming evidence of fraud provided by the opposition. Poll observers uploaded as many as 83 percent of the tallies in the country, and the Carter Center confirmed the election did not meet international standards of electoral integrity.
Following the opposition’s publication of the tallies, thousands of Venezuelans protested the regime’s fraud. Maduro responded to the election results and the subsequent civil unrest with a familiar combination of repressive tactics employing state security forces to quash dissent, arrest opposition figures, and pressure political leaders into exile. Since the election, the Maduro regime has arrested over 2,400 people in connection with protests, including 114 children.
Prior to the 2024 elections, electoral participation in Venezuela was around 45.7 percent. After recent events, electoral participation will likely tank yet again as disillusioned Venezuelans leave the country in growing numbers. While the United States has at times tried to leverage U.S. oil contracts in exchange for democratic commitments, the silence of the United States in the face of Venezuela’s stolen election has allowed Maduro to cling to power, even as domestic pressures crack the regime from within.
Tunisia
On October 6, Tunisia held its own presidential election. Like Algeria and Venezuela, this election came amid widespread reports of fraud as incumbent president Kais Saied secured more than 90 percent of the vote. Independent election monitoring groups expressed concerns after state election officials denied election monitoring permits to many civil society organizations. Meanwhile, authorities arrested two opposition leaders after they announced their intention to run in the election and arrested at least 97 members of the opposition group Ennahda.
Saied’s efforts to shape the election have led to a precipitous decline in election participation. While 49.8 percent of voters participated in the first round of the 2019 presidential race, only 27.7 percent of the electorate participated in Saturday’s election. In other recent votes, the 2022 constitutional referendum led by Saied spurred only a 28.0 percent turnout, while recent local elections garnered a measly 11.7 percent and 12.4 percent turnout in the first and second rounds, respectively.
Tunisians are not necessarily staying home because of democratic backsliding. Amid a severe economic crisis, young Tunisians are principally concerned with inflation, unemployment, and other day-to-day concerns. But, economic challenges have political implications. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest declining living standards, and as Tunisians increasingly feel that their opinions will no longer be heard at the ballot box, some recent protests have begun to explicitly echo the slogan of the 2011 revolution. On the surface, Saied’s repression of dissent during this latest election appears to be a story of successful authoritarian consolidation. But the collapse in election turnout, coupled with Tunisia’s economic crisis and history of successful mass mobilization, paints a more complex picture of Saied’s gains.
Conclusion
Recent elections in Tunisia and Venezuela provide an opportunity for the United States to push for reform at a key moment of social unrest. Twin political and economic crises have led to mass migration out of Venezuela, growing waves of youth migration out of Tunisia, and rising domestic unrest as North Africa and Latin America become key geopolitical flashpoints. But as popular discontent grows within Venezuela and Tunisia to push for greater accountability and reform, the United States and its allies have remained silent in the postelection aftermath despite what they reveal about the increasing fragility of Saied and Maduro’s regimes.
In reality, the United States and its allies have a unique opportunity to push for real commitments from Caracas and Tunis to uphold international norms and human rights. The United States should develop and implement a strategy of containment, which could include conditioning some development assistance on reforms. For example, the U.S. government has so far maintained support for Tunisia’s “apolitical, professional military.” Instead, it should condition some foreign military assistance for Tunisia on human rights reforms to clearly signal that the military cannot wash its hands of Tunisia’s democratic backsliding. In Venezuela, licenses granted to U.S. oil giant Chevron that were intended to incentivize free and fair elections backfired and provided a lifeline to the Maduro regime. In view of deteriorating electoral conditions and the violent suppression of protesters, the United States should revoke the license and support the International Criminal Court case against Maduro.
These moves may carry short-term costs for the United States. Conditioning assistance or enforcing those conditions may strain bilateral relations and push these countries to tighten ties with U.S. adversaries like China and Russia. But the authoritarian turn in countries like Tunisia or Venezuela has already begun a geopolitical realignment that risks reshaping their respective regions. At issue is not merely these rigged elections but the imitation they threaten to inspire. Inaction may spare the United States the challenge of renegotiating its relations with these states in the short term. Even so, normalizing sham elections has a long-term cost to the United States that only grows with time.
Martin Pimentel is a program manager and research associate in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Rubi Bledsoe is a research associate with the Americas Program at CSIS.