exchange for food or compensation for lost land. 13 Polling stations were placed inside military compounds, and junta soldiers guarded them with armed personnel, instilling fear in voters. 14 In the days leading up to polling and on voting days, the junta increased security patrols, deployed police vehicles, summoned residents by phone, and used loudspeakers to order people to vote. In Mandalay Region, the junta violently forced locals to vote in Phase 3 polls, including by physically dragging individuals from their homes to polling stations. Families with conscription-aged members reported voting solely out of fear that refusal would lead to forced recruitment. 15 Administrative chaos enabled further fraud. One voter in Chanmyathazi Township (Mandalay Region) was forced to vote twice in separate townships for phases 2 and 3.16 Even under these coercive tactics, voter turnout remained very low nationwide, with only 13.1 million of 24.2 million eligible voters included in the sham polls (compared to 29.5 million who voted in 2020). Empty polling stations and early closures were reported, including in Yangon Region. Despite fear, people largely boycotted the sham election, demonstrating a clear rejection of the regime, its fake parliament, and the illegitimate institutions produced by this process. Advanced Voting manipulation overrides the election rejection In the 2010 sham election, the junta’s USDP was accused of manipulating advance votes to secure seats. During the 2025 sham polling period, advanced voting once again became the regime’s primary tool to reverse results it did not like. 17 In early Jan 2026, the Shan and Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP), Myanmar Farmers Development Party (MFDP), and People’s Party (PP) - 3 of the 6 nationally contesting parties - complained to the UEC that “excessively high” numbers of advance votes had altered results across several constituencies.18 It appeared the military and the USDP was up to its old tricks. Despite Burma’s election laws, which stipulate that only certain groups of people can vote in advance, 19 regime troops and police sealed off village entrances and went door-to-door across Thegon and Waw townships (Bago Region) and forced residents to vote in advance. The regime ditched the electronic voting machines and explicitly instructed 1 person from each house to tick USDP on a paper ballot on behalf of every person in the household, then collected the forged votes in plastic rubbish bags. 20 In Yangon’s highly populated Insein Township, at least 240 advance votes arrived without the attached voter lists and were counted despite objections by contesting parties. 21 Residents across multiple Yangon townships reported that local administrators had pre-filled advance ballots for “guest list” residents who never voted. Authorities claimed these individuals were exempt from voting, yet their ballots were counted automatically. 22 13 DVB (26 Dec 2025) ဘာ်းအတွင် စစ်တရာင်မျာ်းကို မဲတပ်းမ တထာက်ပို့တ က်း မည်ဟို ကို့ခိုင်တ ်းပါတီက ဖအာ်းတပ်း 14 Mizzima (28 Dec 2025) သတတာင်ကကီ်းတွင် စစ် တ ကာ်မရင် တပ် နငို့် မသာ်းစိုမျာ်းသာ မဲ တပ်းခွင် ို့ ၊ အ ပ်သာ်းမျာ်း ချန်လပ်ခ Irrawaddy (27 Jan 2026) Mandalay Residents ‘Pressured to Vote’ in Myanmar Junta’s Election Irrawaddy (27 Jan 2026) Mandalay Residents ‘Pressured to Vote’ in Myanmar Junta’s Election 17 Irrawaddy (6 Jan 2026) Same Old Playbook? USDP Accused of Repeating 2010 Advance-Vote Cheating 18 Irrawaddy (6 Jan 2026) Same Old Playbook? USDP Accused of Repeating 2010 Advance-Vote Cheating; DVB (24 Jan 2026) တ ွ ်းတကာက်ပဲ ွ အပိုင်း ၃ ကျင်းပမညို့်ပမ ြို့နယ်မျာ်း၌ လိုပခ တ ်းတင်း ကျပ် 15 16 19 Mizzima (23 Jan 2026) ပဲခူ်းရ လိုပခ တ ်းစို်း မ် သညို့် တန ာအချ ြို့တွင် တ ွ ်းတကာက်ပဲ ွတနမတ ို့ ိုင်ခင် မဲ ရို ဖွင်ပို့ ပီ ်း မဲကက တပ်းခိုင်း 20 DVB (23 Jan 2026) တဝါပမ ြို့နယ်၌ စစ် တပ် က ကို့ခိုင်တ ်းပါတီအတွက် မဲစာ ွ က်တပေါ် အမန်ပခစ်ခိုင်းပပီ်း မဲမ သမာမလိုပ် ; Mizzima (23 Jan 2026) 21 DVB (12 Jan 2026) စစ်တခါင်းတဆာင် လာတ ာက်ခဲသ ို့ ညို့် အင်းစန်ပမ ြို့နယ်၌ ကက တင်မဲ မသမာမပဖစ် 22 DVB (13 Jan 2026) ဧညို့်စာ င်းပဖငို့်တနထိုင်သူမျာ်း ကိုယ်တိုင် မဲမထညို့် ဘဲ အလိုအတလျာက် ကက တင်မဲ ထညို့်ပပီ်း သာ်းပဖစ်တန ပဲခူ်းရ လပို ခ တ ်းစို်း မ်သညို့် တန ာအချ ြို့တွင် တ ွ ်းတကာက်ပဲ ွတနမတ ို့ ိုင်ခင် မဲ ရို ဖွင်ပို့ ပီ ်း မဲကက တပ်းခိုင်း 5