He needs to pretend to be elected to follow the narrative of “everybody loves me, everbody wants me to be your leader”. It is a principle of Guided Democracies. He is a full blown dictator, but he needs to keep the slim offramp in his narrative that he is elected by the masses so they can argue in his favor: “We elected him!”. Democracy - as flawed as it sometimes seemes - is the superior state form and what people want. Giving them the illusion is necessary for plausible deniability against the dictatorship-argument: “They elected me!”. That nothing is real in russia and everything is a distraction and a deception is just the culture part of them. Churchill (apparently) said “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” I think that is giving them too much credit. When you argue with russians, you mostly will fall on dead ears. The are not very flexible to form new views based on new informations. They tend to conserve their views early on and afterwards every argument is a distraction disguised as a conversation. You will never win an Argument with a russian because their goal is not to change your viewpoint, but to wear you down and move the goalpost as long as it takes before you give up and opened so many topics, that everything becomes opaque confusing. Elections are needed to give the illusion that behind the fog is an actual democratic system. Even though everyone knows there is none if the fog ever goes away. But in russia is never goes away.