this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
        
      
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The Soviet Union was one of the latest. Yeltsin taking office, failing to get his way, and then shelling parliament into surrender being the most prominent example of the failures of electoralism, even in an ostensibly proletarian state.
Gaza also a great instance of the wages of strict electoralism. You rally your people behind a more militant political body (Hamas in 2006) and the end result is your heavily armed neighbors using the results of an election as causa belli. Hell, the American Civil War is another great example, what with a Southern coup government rising up after a Presidential election defeat.
It gives us a fighting chance, at least. But it is also hard, painful, and requiring enormous self-sacrifice particularly among the early adopters.