Mark Zuckerberg is unelected, yet holds the election in his hands

In the old communist regimes of Europe, there was an election joke: "It's not how you vote - it's how your vote is counted." The implication being, the process was so open to fraud that any election itself was also pretty much just a joke.

For those aware of this - it sounded very uncomfortable to hear Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing during a recent Axios interview that his social media and tech behemoth is now essentially committed to grooming US voters ahead of the November election to expect, and accept that election results may not be readily known and announced on election night, as is normally the case.

Functional democracies that seek to bring about confidence in the process and more importantly, acceptance of an election, require quick and transparent results. Anything that means ballots simmering in some "kitchen" for a long time to be counted, is traditionally a red flag for potential election rigging.

But Zuckerberg is now saying that the US presidential election results may not be known for a number of days, or perhaps, even weeks, after the vote had taken place. At this point, you don't even have to have first-hand authoritarian regime experience to ask yourself: how is this even legal, let alone legitimate?

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