Many people will be surprised, but elections still exist. On September 10, they will take place in 40 regions, including Yekaterinburg, Omsk Region, Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yaroslavl and Arkhangelsk Regions, Khakassia, and Yakutia. So we need to decide how to approach these elections, and I’d like to offer some suggestions. Since 2011, the voting tactics we proposed have consistently been recognized as the most effective, even though each time they had to be defended in fierce debates. In an authoritarian country like Russia, simply getting more votes does not in itself guarantee either success or victory. Which, broadly speaking, is exactly what we are seeing, given where I am writing this post from. That is why we view participation in elections as a crucial, but by no means the only, element of political struggle. Everyone has repeated the phrase “power in Russia will not change as a result of elections” many times, but I was the first to say it, back in 2011. However, that does not in any way diminish the importance of having the right electoral strategy. The main thing to understand and remember—and this is the foundation of every one of our election strategies—is that all elections are different. Decisions must be made based on the specific situation. There are no universal rules. We have to adapt in response to the authorities’ new tricks and inventions. Just look: since Putin’s first year as president, the rules have changed in every election cycle to make sure our previously effective strategy would no longer work. And we would be idiots if we kept doing the same thing instead of changing strategy to match the new rules. (Watch the full video on the Navalny YouTube channel and read the post on the navalny.com blog. Links are in Stories and in the profile bio.)