I believe the statement made by an Air Force officer back in the 1960s concerning UFOs: “It they were real, (i.e.: actual alien spacecraft), all of us majors would be colonels.”
Nowadays even the most authoritarian dictatorship likes to present itself with at least a façade of democracy. The real benefit to the dictator is even if everyone knows the elections are complete frauds, they serve to remind everyone just who is indeed boss.
This scene was around 1999. The buttons could have been for David Duke, a politician, white supremacist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Procrastinator’s viewpoint has no depth.