How an election was stolen

The events in this true story took place not in the Excited States of America, but in the Land of Bambazonke, aka Zimbabwe, a southern Afican shithole where I lived and worked in the 1990s. I left Zimbabwe on the Flying Dutchman in 2001, but kept in touch with an ever-decreasing number of colleagues and friends, until they too left... or died.

The People's Republic of Zimbabwe had been ruled since its independence in 1980 by Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, a neo-Marxist anti-colonialist dictator who tolerated the presence of an opposition party so he could say his country wasn't a one-party state, although in fact it was.

Having an opposition means you have to have an election every now and then, just for show, and Uncle Bob decreed that his people should vote for him again in March 2008. Because of Zimbabwe's dire economic situation, the elections were expected to provide the incumbent and his ZANU-PF party with their toughest electoral challenge to date. 

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, accused the government of planning to rig the election. Human Rights Watch said that the election was likely to be "deeply flawed", and so it was. As election night, March 29th, wore on, unofficial counts showed MDC-T building up big leads in the cities of Harare and Bulawayo, but the more populous rural areas were slow to report. In the wee hours of the morning of March 30th, counting was halted, with no explanation.

No official results were announced for more than a month thereafter. The failure to release results was strongly criticized by the MDC, which unsuccessfully sought a court order to force their release. After a recount and "verification" of the results, the government-controlled Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced on May 2nd that Mr Tsvangirai won 47.9% of the vote and President Mugabe 43.2%, necessitating a run-off, to be held on 27 June 2008.

Political violence ensued, for which  ZANU-PF and MDC each blamed the other's supporters. On June 22nd, Mr Tsvangirai announced that he was withdrawing from the run-off, describing it as a "violent sham" and saying that his supporters risked being killed if they voted for him. The second round of elections went ahead with President Mugabe as the only actively participating candidate, although Mr Tsvangirai's name remained on the ballot. 

Comrade Bob won the second round by an overwhelming margin -- 85.3% to 9.3% -- and was sworn in for another term on 29 June 2008. He remained President until November of 2017, when, at the age of 93, he was ousted by his own party in a bloodless coup.

Any similarity between the events described above and last night's goings-on in Philthydelphia and Allegheny County PA and Atlants and Fulton County GA is purely coincidental.