Venezuelan elections:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-68664242

The dictatorship blocked the winner of the primaries from running through a farcical legal process. So, she named a substitute candidate. The regime simply didn't allow the substitute candidate to register by both keeping the website for registrations non-functional during the registration period and using police to block access to the registration office.

Somehow an "opposition" candidate who is neither very popular nor very opposed to the dictatorship managed to register.

So that happened today.

The regime doesn't care that nobody anywhere in the world thinks these are actual elections. Much like the recent elections in Russia, they put on this show to attempt to draw a false equivalence between themselves and liberal democracies. Steve Bannon said it best: flood the zone with shit. They're flinging shit at the concept of elections to sow seeds of doubt about all elections. The idea isn't to make people believe their election is real, it is to make people doubt if any election is real.

They also have a plan for regaining diplomatic recognition from the USA, and it hinges on fanning the flames of anti-immigration sentiment in our domestic policy so that their willingness to accept mass deportations becomes a valuable bargaining chip. They stand a strong chance of being successful, and it doesn't really matter which party is in power.

Terrible things have happened, and even worse things are possible, maybe even probable, in the near future.