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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 ou

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...
cema 11y ago
I've been on polling boards in a much (much) smaller country A different country. Different culture. Different people. Cannot extrapolate.

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...

cema 11y ago

I've been on polling boards in a much (much) smaller country A different country. Different culture. Different people. Cannot extrapolate.