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What passes for elections in Russia these days bears little resemblance to any recognizably democratic process. Opposition figures are jailed, exiled, or dead. Remaining candidates are carefully screened. In Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, ballots are cast at gunpoint. Some precincts’ vote tallies are mathematically impossible, and most Russians know that the outcome is predetermined. But in a dictatorship, even a rigged election has meaning. What matters is not the predictable victory declared by the ruling party, United Russia, following the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary elections but the signals that this completely orchestrated piece of political theater sends across Russia and to the world.

The first signal is the illusion of legitimacy. By adhering to constitutionally mandated electoral cycles, an autocrat asserts his legal claim to power—never mind that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mandate from the last more or less genuine election in 2000 has long expired. Putin is very fond of recalling his studies to become a lawyer, and one of the words he has used most often in all his public speeches is “law.” In the process of building his dictatorship, Putin always thought to keep the legal fabric intact. On the surface at least, procedures should be followed—a sham legality we know from other dictatorships, including the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

What passes for elections in Russia these days bears little resemblance to any recognizably democratic process. Opposition figures are jailed, exiled, or dead. Remaining candidates are carefully screened. In Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, ballots are cast at gunpoint. Some precincts’ vote tallies are mathematically impossible, and most Russians know that the outcome is predetermined. But in a dictatorship, even a rigged election has meaning. What matters is not the predictable victory declared by the ruling party, United Russia, following the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary elections but the signals that this completely orchestrated piece of political theater sends across Russia and to the world.

The first signal is the illusion of legitimacy. By adhering to constitutionally mandated electoral cycles, an autocrat asserts his legal claim to power—never mind that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mandate from the last more or less genuine election in 2000 has long expired. Putin is very fond of recalling his studies to become a lawyer,........

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