It’s election season.

I’m not talking about Tuesday’s big primaries in Ohio and Texas.

While Americans have been turning out in droves for this year’s astonishing race, voters elsewhere in the world have geared up for elections that also matter to us. So, if you want a break from the endless U.S. election season, here are five other races to watch.

Russia’s presidential election on March 2 was a contest whose outcome was never in question. But the impact of the election remains unclear.

Dmitri Medvedev, the 42-year-old protege of the current president, Vladimir Putin, had been anointed by his mentor as president-in-waiting and won 70 percent of the ballots. In a bizarre twist, Medvedev – who served as first deputy prime minister and former head of Russian energy giant Gazprom – is set to appoint Putin as the new prime minister. The speculation is that Putin will be the power behind his man.

And yet the president-elect talks a different game from former KGB officer Putin. On Putin’s watch, virtually every check and balance in the Russian system has been dismantled, the national press muzzled, and human-rights campaigners and political opponents jailed.

Medvedev speaks in more West-friendly tones. In an interview a year ago, he told me he believed in “rule of law”; he’s been giving speeches about “freedom of expression.”

So watch what Medvedev does, along with what he says. Will he merely be the soft face put forth to foreigners, while the KGB men continue to run the Kremlin?

Will political prisoners, like human-rights campaigner Lev Ponomarev and oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, be freed? Will Medevev stop protecting the KGB man accused by Scotland Yard of poisoning a Putin critic in London with radioactive polonium-210? Will Russia stop using the flow of gas as a weapon against its neighbors?

How the results of this Russian election play out will determine the nature of U.S.-Russian relations for years to come.

Another election whose outcome isn’t yet clear took place Feb. 18 in Pakistan. What we know is this: The Bush administration’s close ally, former general and President Pervez Musharraf was roundly rebuffed. He wasn’t up for re-election, but his party was decimated at the polls.

The two opposition parties who garnered the bulk of the votes are still trying to agree on a prime minister. They are also trying to assemble the two-thirds of parliament needed to impeach Musharraf on charges of extending his presidency by unconstitutional means.

What remains uncertain is how the new government will approach the problem of the Taliban, local jihadis, and elements of al-Qaida who have sunk roots in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. These jihadis threaten both their neighbor and Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister slain in December, argued that a freely elected government would have the legitimacy to fight the jihadis, unlike Musharraf. She believed she could convince her people that this was their fight and not, as many Pakistanis believe, a war imposed on them by the United States.

Bhutto’s party collected the largest number of seats, but with her gone, it remains unclear how a new government will handle this issue. How the election results play out will have a huge impact on efforts to curb radical jihadis worldwide and to stabilize Afghanistan.

Coming up are Iranian parliamentary elections on March 14. Hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – whose term isn’t up until 2009 – has been losing popularity because of his mishandling of the economy. This vote was seen as a test of his support. Iranian reformers were hoping to make a comeback, and pragmatic conservatives who aren’t comfortable with the president’s anti-western rhetoric were also seeking gains.

Iran’s past elections have produced surprises. Ahmadinejad wasn’t the establishment candidate and his victory was a shocker, as was the surprising presidential win by reformer Mohammad Khatami in 1997. But in these elections, hard-liners have managed to disqualify the candidacy of hundreds of reformers.

Still, this vote bears close watching for clues to Ahmadinejad’s popularity and prospects for better U.S. relations with Iran.

Last but not least are presidential elections on March 22 in Taiwan. President Chen Shui-bian has set up a referendum alongside the presidential ballot. The referendum asks voters to let the government apply for U.N. membership under the name of Taiwan, rather than its formal name, the Republic of China.

China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province, denounces the referendum as a step toward separation; U.S. officials call it provocative (especially since the United States is Taiwan’s principal ally). Chen’s party was decimated in Jan. 12 parliamentary elections, which suggests that voters don’t want to rock the boat with China. Hopefully, with the 2008 Olympics looming, China will react judiciously to the results.

But this election, like the three others, will affect the foreign policy agenda that faces the new American president in 2009.