Or, things are in motion to where votes are mostly irrelevant, like they are in Russian elections.
Presidential elections were held in Russia from 15 to 17 March 2024.[1][2][a] It was the eighth presidential election in the country. The incumbent president Vladimir Putin won with 88% of the vote, the highest percentage in a presidential election in post-Soviet Russia,[4] gaining a fifth term in what was widely viewed as a foregone conclusion.[5][6] He was inaugurated on 7 May 2024.[7][8
Russia wants Trump to enjoy similar success in the US. Trump probably started as just a chaos monkey in the American machine, someone who could amplify divisions in the US and sow discord and occupy our attention with internal strife. So they elevated him for those reasons. But now, Trump as U.S. President is almost a requirement for them to achieve any sort of lasting positive outcome in the Ukraine.
A 2019 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee[163] found "an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure" by Russian intelligence in 2016.[164] The activity occurred in "all 50 states" and is thought by "many officials and experts" to have been "a trial run ... to probe American defenses and identify weaknesses in the vast back-end apparatus—voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, electronic poll books and other equipment" of state election systems.[165]The report warned that the United States "remains vulnerable" in the 2020 election.[164]
Subsequent declassified Intelligence Community assessments and press statements released discussing Russian interference in the 2018 elections, the 2020 elections, and the 2022 elections have likewise concluded or stated that the interference occurred primarily by active measures social media influence campaigns and not by cyberattacks on U.S. elections infrastructure—including by spreading disinformation about the security of the elections infrastructure itself to undermine confidence in U.S. election processes and in democracy in the United States by the American public.[43][c]
Recent news about Russian bankrolling of Tenet Media and right-wing influencers shows this isn't old news. Its an ongoing campaign. If Russia's 2016 probing of state election infrastructure revealed ways to manipulate votes, 2024 is the year where they are going to make use of those findings. Their future depends on it.
As scary as it is, now is a fascinating time in history.