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reporting that up to 99.23% of people voted in favour of joining Russia

I can't understand why they wouldn't even pretend to a believable result. Of course everybody knows that this was not a real referendum, but having gone to the trouble of pretending to have it, why not carry on with a number that was at least faintly plausible?

I caught a BBC program at one point asking the same question about why dictators hold fake elections with 99%+ favorability. The answer seemed to be about projecting power and stoking their egos, but I'm not sure that really explains anything.

Obviously Russia does not care whether the rest of the world accepts these results. It must be internally directed, where it just reinforces what people already think. I'm sure it's rejected by Putin's opponents. But for those who were on his side... do they really not think the number seems suspicious? Or is there some completely unrelated psychology that I'm missing?

Non-paywalled article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63052207