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May I add yet another story to this thread? I was a member of municipal polling board during last Putin's election. Honestly I did my best to prevent fraud, an

May I add yet another story to this thread? I was a member of municipal polling board during last Putin's election. Honestly I did my best to prevent fraud, and yet the voting protocol (a paper where all ballots are summed up, it goes to an higher-level board) was rewritten right under my nose (+25% to a leading candidate, guess which one), with police covering it up. I tried to warn a friendly member of higher-level board, just to learn that all independent members of the board were escorted out of building by our SWAT analogue. Voting and vote counting were all recorded on much-hyped state-wise CCTV system, so I thought "right, I'll go to a public prosecutor, they will retrieve the record and the fraud would be obvious". Guess what — there were no interest at all, my complaint was routed into the same higher-level board. It wasn't an isolated event. In fact, the huge part of polling boards in Saint-Petersburg had their protocols rewritten. It was widely publicized in a local independent press, but all court cases were ultimately lost and no one were held accountable. Similar stories took place in other Russian cities. This was a huge, centrally orchestrated fraud, with those in power getting away with it (as always). Voting is an institute of critical importance to any liberal democracy out there, and it is completely and systematically destroyed by Putin and his team. I can't see how on Earth the country where it's normal can be even compared to US; it's like comparing North Korea and US with a straight face. And yes, given that it's HN, let me also mention that all cellular and Internet operators in Russia are legally and openly obliged to pay for wiretapping equipment and install it with no regulatory oversight on how it's used. It's so amusing when people somehow combine any degree of support for Snowden AND for Russian government.

datalist 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_vo...
- lambdadmitry 11y ago
  Look, even this article is titled "controversy". I personally have a videofile from my own polling station, where you can hear loud and clear true results of the voting, and then look up "official" results with 20%+ difference. It's not even a controversy here, it's a wide scale fraud in broad daylight, and not even one official was persecuted for this. I understand an attraction of reiterating how corrupt America is, but it's not even close here.
3princip 11y ago
This is very suspect and very hard to believe. I've been on polling boards in a much (much) smaller country, and it would be logistically impossible to carry out fraud on that scale (25%) without it being widely documented. The suggestion that there are enough police (including SWAT none the less) to watch over tens of thousands of polling stations and enforce this is even stranger. And this is from a miniscule country compared to Russia (size mentioned because of the logistics challenge of such an endeavour). There were such stories in my country as well, previously, but were generally propaganda from the opposition at the time.
- lambdadmitry 11y ago
  >This is very suspect and very hard to believe Here is my blog post on that elections [1]. It's in Russian, so please use Google Translate to make sense of it. >without it being widely documented It is widely documented. Now what? There is no such thing as "class action lawsuit" in Russia. The only two entities that can file a lawsuit are candidates (because they are directly harmed by fraud) or public prosecutors. The former are filtered [2], and the latter one don't care. So what exactly can be done with the documented fraud? >The suggestion that there are enough police to watch over tens of thousands of polling stations All polling station have at least one policeman during voting day in Russia (at least in big cities). There are about 700 000 policemen in Russia, so there are more than enough to handle this. >logistics challenge of such an endeavour What do you consider a logistic challenge? There are a lot of police stations in Russia, it's not like they're all concentrated in a few places. If you mean the logistic challenge of the fraud itself, it's also pretty straightforward: the biggest part of county's funding comes from Moscow, and it depends on election results. Incentives for local authorities are here, combine them with deteriorated social institutes and all branches of authority fused together and you get widespread fraud without much coordination. Heck, just look up Chechnya's voting results, with 99.59% turnout and 99.89% of votes for Putin [3]. It's just plain impossible in any electoral situation. Nothing is done about it, guess why. [1]: http://si14.livejournal.com/23943.html http://si14.livejournal.com/23943.html [2]: you need to get an absurd amount of signatures to become a presidential candidate, and even if you manage to collect them, they can be easily dismissed by some anonymous expert as "forged" ones [3]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/world/europe/fraudulent-votes-for-putin-abound-in-chechnya.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/world/europe/fraudulent-vo...

datalist 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_vo...

lambdadmitry 11y ago
Look, even this article is titled "controversy". I personally have a videofile from my own polling station, where you can hear loud and clear true results of the voting, and then look up "official" results with 20%+ difference. It's not even a controversy here, it's a wide scale fraud in broad daylight, and not even one official was persecuted for this. I understand an attraction of reiterating how corrupt America is, but it's not even close here.

3princip 11y ago

This is very suspect and very hard to believe. I've been on polling boards in a much (much) smaller country, and it would be logistically impossible to carry out fraud on that scale (25%) without it being widely documented. The suggestion that there are enough police (including SWAT none the less) to watch over tens of thousands of polling stations and enforce this is even stranger. And this is from a miniscule country compared to Russia (size mentioned because of the logistics challenge of such an endeavour). There were such stories in my country as well, previously, but were generally propaganda from the opposition at the time.

lambdadmitry 11y ago
>This is very suspect and very hard to believe Here is my blog post on that elections [1]. It's in Russian, so please use Google Translate to make sense of it. >without it being widely documented It is widely documented. Now what? There is no such thing as "class action lawsuit" in Russia. The only two entities that can file a lawsuit are candidates (because they are directly harmed by fraud) or public prosecutors. The former are filtered [2], and the latter one don't care. So what exactly can be done with the documented fraud? >The suggestion that there are enough police to watch over tens of thousands of polling stations All polling station have at least one policeman during voting day in Russia (at least in big cities). There are about 700 000 policemen in Russia, so there are more than enough to handle this. >logistics challenge of such an endeavour What do you consider a logistic challenge? There are a lot of police stations in Russia, it's not like they're all concentrated in a few places. If you mean the logistic challenge of the fraud itself, it's also pretty straightforward: the biggest part of county's funding comes from Moscow, and it depends on election results. Incentives for local authorities are here, combine them with deteriorated social institutes and all branches of authority fused together and you get widespread fraud without much coordination. Heck, just look up Chechnya's voting results, with 99.59% turnout and 99.89% of votes for Putin [3]. It's just plain impossible in any electoral situation. Nothing is done about it, guess why. [1]: http://si14.livejournal.com/23943.html http://si14.livejournal.com/23943.html [2]: you need to get an absurd amount of signatures to become a presidential candidate, and even if you manage to collect them, they can be easily dismissed by some anonymous expert as "forged" ones [3]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/world/europe/fraudulent-votes-for-putin-abound-in-chechnya.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/world/europe/fraudulent-vo...