Azerbaijan, a small country near Georgia and Iran, is governed under a president who took over from his father and is periodically reelected by a "fair" vote. By hosting the most recent election, current President Ilham Aliyev attempted to silence activists who were protesting his restrictive ways, policies, and laws.
In the election, they attempted to switch to an electronic voting system which in turn backfired by exposing a clear rigging in the system and the votes. The electronic application accidently revealled the results in a landslide win for incumbent President Ilham Aliyev. However, revealling the results and vote tallies is not typically a big issue except when the voting has not actually openned yet.
This is not the response most people, especially activists and protestors, wanted from a country recently added to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The revalling of these fake results signify that the current Azerbaijani government had plans to fake the election in order to feign the publics rights to vote for their elected officials.
Now that this has been leaked to the world, it is brought to the world's public eye that these human rights violations still are prevelant. We often forget that others do not have the same priviledges and rights that we have here in America. We have always had the right to vote for our officials fairly. Furthermore, we have a bipartisan government to give us even more choice in our government and how we are ruled and governed.
Lastly, we are also further priviledged that these rights are not in danger here in America. There are rarely activists or protestors outside the polls in any section of the country. The Azerbaijani government attempted to stop these protestors from accomplishing their goals by providing the electronic voting method, but it was all a public-pleasing fake plan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/09/oops-azerbaijan-released-election-results-before-voting-had-even-started/
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