This is truly shocking. What you describe is reminiscent of what happens in third world manipulated pseudo democracies. So we have a facade which hides the fact that the toothless electoral commission is procedurally only an obfuscatory body meant to be there to lend an air of respectability. I believe that elections in some of these countries are usually carried out under the observations of regional or international bodies, such as OSCE (sorry have to check this). I wonder whether a legal challenge can be mounted to bring this matter to the attention of such a body. This is all rather too big but the general apathy the whole subject seems to attract, is amazing and denotes the terminal morbidity of our so called democracy .