Azerbaijan releases election results 1 Day before voting even started

Azerbaijan's big presidential election was anticipated to be neither free nor fair.  President Ilham Aliyev, who took over from his father 10 years ago, has stepped up intimidation of activists and journalists. 

Rights groups are complaining about free speech restrictions and one-sided state media coverage. Azerbaijan's election authorities released vote results – a full day before voting had even started.

The vote counts – spoiler alert: Aliyev was shown as winning by a landslide – were pushed out on an official smartphone app run by the Central Election Commission. It showed Aliyev as "winning" with 72.76 percent of the vote. That's on track with his official vote counts in previous elections: he won ("won"?) 76.84 percent of the vote in 2003 and 87 percent in 2008.