Political participation by large percentages of a nation, state, or municipality’s eligible population is fundamental to democracy. So is the exercise of choice regarding leaders or policy alternatives within a democratic framework. That is why elections, run by varying methods, offer useful and mostly incontestable methods of demonstrating citizen preferences. The modern democratic state absolutely needs to know what its constituents want and whether proposed leaders and reform initiatives are acceptable.
But the conduct of elections need not, by itself, signify or certify the existence of democracy. The holding of elections is too often used to sanitize modern polities that are antidemocratic in concept and practice. Indeed, there are a host of contemporary electoral autocracies in the modern world. Those are the entities that claim to be democratic but, in actual practice, deny their peoples’ voice, choice, basic freedoms such as expression and assembly, and sometimes even take away rights...