The electoral farce that took place in Russia last week was hardly interesting as a political event: once again, the main Kremlin-backed party, United Russia, retained a constitutional majority in parliament in a procedure that only Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propagandists could deem free or fair; this time around, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe couldn’t even send observers because of restrictions imposed by the Russian government. That doesn’t mean, however, that the rest of the world has nothing to learn from what happened. Anyone interested in how democracy, whether real or imitative, functions in the age of technology should pay attention.
