Annulling the results of an election on an accounting issue is not democracy. They could prosecute him for fraud if he committed it, that's not the same as revoking the vote of the population.
(later edit: Actually probably they did not pocket the ad money, since I think the accusation is most of it was not legitimate ads, but puppet-account posts from some service. Of course, TikTok could still be be held responsible to better police these, but perhaps is not the direct destination of the money.)
Also what can they do besides disqualifying him or delaying the elections for months(years?) until he's convicted of fraud (hopefully by that point all of his voters would have forgotten all those ads)?
Because this is what our court did.
If a person is found cheating (and no other interference), that person's exam results will be annulled.
Why do you think this is not the case?
Any party who wishes to participate in the elections will have to start from step 0, from collecting 200k signatures of people who support their candidacy.
That's the problem with analogies: they are always inadequate.
> tend to believe that voters are influenced toddlers who can't be trusted.
No, people tend to believe that things like canoeing financing, income sources, political ads etc. have to be disclosed and monitored.
10 people were competing for president, a position with significant power. Whoever you elect will have powers immediately so you cannot afford to kick cheaters out after the fact, only before.
This election game is played in two rounds. If you find a cheater before the first round, what happens if you remove him? There's 9 left. What about in the second round where it's 1v1? You just gave away the presidency to last candidate.
Romania acted too late in kicking the cheater out. Maybe there were reasons for that, but this means re-running the elections without the cheater might be the lesser evil.