It’s fascinating to see this find new pastures in the new world. As a proud Russian citizen.
Some day you’ll remember with nostalgie those years of the ruling party actually caring to win elections.
Jokes aside, it’s easier to cheat now because it’s easier to do everything, and that’s because of the Internet and modern computing systems.
You can’t unmince minced meat back.
But you can apply the same change in a different direction and see that today direct non-anonymous democracy is actually plausible, if it’s instituted, for big countries. 100 years ago it simply wasn’t possible. Now it is.
Or that today Soviet system (as in Soviet democracy and not totalitarian state capitalism) is actually possible to build now. When they were trying, they couldn’t, they didn’t possess the means.
And that both these things are actually what these people have done to us, but inverted. Our “direct vote” is the data they collect about us to classify and predict us for control. Our “Soviets” are that classification, and our “central planning” is those predictions and control.
They’ve done all this, just directed for their own interest. So maybe one can do the opposite.