What's a Corrupt Election Among Friends?

Public opinion polls suggest that Aliyev's party would probably win a majority of seats in a free and fair election, but the young leader lacks the confidence to allow fair balloting. Officials who rigged the last election have not been replaced, and the government has refused to follow the Iraqi example of marking voters' fingers with ink to prevent multiple trips to the polls. Aliyev's party changed the electoral law to make it more difficult to uncover false balloting through the usual means of parallel-vote tabulation or exit polls. To date, Aliyev has not allowed the National Democratic Institute -- an American nongovernmental organization recognized around the world as a premier election-monitoring organization -- to observe the vote count.