Kim has won 100% of the election

Ismail wrote:

I'm pretty sure the DPRK's electoral system isn't much different from that used in the USSR. Soviet elections didn't have "yes" or "no" boxes you had to tick. If you wanted to vote yes then all you had to do was take the ballot marked with the name of the candidate and deposit it in the box. If you wanted to vote against the candidate then you had to use a pencil to write a line or something across his/her name on the ballot before depositing it.

So in that sense, assuming that the DPRK's electoral system still operates essentially the same way it did in the 1950s-80s, the quote is dishonest.

It's a completely meaningless formality in any case when there is only one candidate that people are allowed to vote for. Furthermore, who would want to risk prison time/deportation to the work camps, etc., by actually having the courage to strike off the name of the Socialist Scion of the Sun God?

The fact of the matter is that there is no place on Earth where a candidate could poll 100% of the election results. Even if it were Jesus running against Satan, which you would think would be a pretty safely assured slam dunk for J.C., there are a few peeps out there who would cast their lot for the guy with the horns and pointed stick.

Comrade Gulper wrote:

It's a completely meaningless formality in any case when there is only one candidate that people are allowed to vote for. Furthermore, who would want to risk prison time/deportation to the work camps, etc., by actually having the courage to strike off the name of the Socialist Scion of the Sun God?

I get your point and agree that the DPRK's elections aren't exactly credible, but the idea of single-candidate elections are not themselves inherently undemocratic.

"What is not usually understood by foreign observers is that there is, at each election, not one election meeting, but (as often in the village elections) several successive election meetings for the same electoral unit, at which candidates are nominated, discussed and either successively eliminated or carried forward to the final meeting when the last vote is taken. This, the only decisive vote, is usually unanimous, a fact which has often led to the inference that there has been no real exercise of choice by the electorate. On the contrary, the procedure is one of elaborate preliminary sifting of the nominations by various, often many, successive votes at the previous meetings, by which the less popular candidates have been eliminated." - Webbs, Soviet Communism Volume 1, 1935, p. 41.

See also: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n2/darcy.htm

What was important were those pre-election meetings. In the USSR and likeminded countries they were often reduced to a formality, in which the local Party branch would have someone read out the name of a candidate and all those present would say "aye" and that was that. That was an example of undemocratic practice in the USSR, not the existence of a single party or a single candidate on the ballot.

Bourgoisie elections are shams. You only have to choose from among an array of capitalists and landlords. If leftist media is given space it would surely awaken the masses like what has been happening right now in the Philippines. If you try to look at communist elections from a wide angle, you will see that nobody abstained in electing Kim Jong Un. An abstention means opposition. Even in the old Soviet Union there were no abstentions given the media space given to dissenters in the last days of the Soviet empire.

There are many ways and means to express opposition to or indignation of Kim Jong Un. One of them is abstention. Nobody abstained. Everybody voted for him. Irrefutable evidence. Man, he does not sexually harass the ladies like bourgeoisie leaders of Italy do. He is a darling of the press because he is a gentleman.

lev wrote:

There are many ways and means to express opposition to or indignation of Kim Jong Un. One of them is abstention. Nobody abstained. Everybody voted for him.

It's hard to abstain when doing so is an automatic proof of anti-Kim sentiment. Think about it.

Quote:

Man, he does not sexually harass the ladies like bourgeoisie leaders of Italy do. He is a darling of the press because he is a gentleman.

You're young.