Across Russia's eleven time zones, polling stations opened Friday for a three-day parliamentary election that is less a contest of competing visions than a formal ratification of existing power. The structures governing how votes are counted and seats are allocated have been shaped over two decades to favor the ruling party, ensuring that the legislature that emerges will closely resemble the one it replaces. What unfolds through Sunday is, in the deepest sense, a ritual of legitimacy — democracy's procedural form deployed in service of a predetermined political order.