The appearance of legitimacy helps dictatorial regimes a lot.
They try to suppress it because a lot of people do it. The fewer people who vote and their vote doesn’t match the person or group who remains in power, the less crowd control that needs to be carried out with troops and violence after the election, the fewer inconvenient facts about post-election violence that need to be explained away to the supportive base with narratives and lies. Even authoritarians don’t like spending money they don’t have to.
They also try to suppress protest groups of any kind directed at any branch of the state, economic privacy, obtaining arms, private communications systems, and any and all things that might pose any kind of threat, even if only one to their image of legitimacy (such as pepper spraying peaceful protesters if protests get too large).
The election outcome, if favorable to the violent dictatorship, will be publicized widely and attempts to dispute it shut down. If unfavorable, discredited and disregarded, and any protests against it swiftly and violently quashed.
sneak|5 years ago
They try to suppress it because a lot of people do it. The fewer people who vote and their vote doesn’t match the person or group who remains in power, the less crowd control that needs to be carried out with troops and violence after the election, the fewer inconvenient facts about post-election violence that need to be explained away to the supportive base with narratives and lies. Even authoritarians don’t like spending money they don’t have to.
They also try to suppress protest groups of any kind directed at any branch of the state, economic privacy, obtaining arms, private communications systems, and any and all things that might pose any kind of threat, even if only one to their image of legitimacy (such as pepper spraying peaceful protesters if protests get too large).
The election outcome, if favorable to the violent dictatorship, will be publicized widely and attempts to dispute it shut down. If unfavorable, discredited and disregarded, and any protests against it swiftly and violently quashed.