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“Silent days” are still a thing. The new bit is that the day before the election is not included, only the election days themselves. This prohibition makes sens
by akho 5y ago
“Silent days” are still a thing. The new bit is that the day before the election is not included, only the election days themselves. This prohibition makes sense to me.
My personal opinion is that telegram’s actions are reasonable in this context.
Navalny’s team fucked up by publishing their recommendations only on the 15th, two days before voting. I don’t understand that decision at all.
- gnull 5y agoThis ensures Putin's government won't have enough time to subvert the recommended candidates in some way.
- akho 5y agoThe government will have plenty of time to do that after the election.
- gnull 5y agoBut that won't prevent the person from being elected. Doing it after comes with many drawbacks.
- akho 5y agoDoing that before the election (I assume your plan, if you were Putin, is to have all 225 “recommended” candidates withdraw?) is more difficult than subverting the, very optimistically, 30 that will get elected.
- gnull 5y agoThere is no dichotomy here. If you know the candidates beforehand, you can bully them before the election, see who wins nevertheless, and bully those again. > to have all 225 “recommended” candidates withdraw? Having some of them withdraw is also useful, it's a numbers game.
- akho 5y agoThe candidates are known beforehand. Putin’s men do not need Navalny to tell them whether there is a popular candidate in an electoral district. Consolidation of “protest” votes does not make someone win an election; it gives a small extra push in contested districts.
- gnull 5y agoYou really don't see the difference between eliminating all the candidates (and all popular candidates) and eliminating one candidate per district? Smart Voting™ creates these popular candidates in the districts where all competitors of Putin's guy are more or less equally popular. Knowing whom they will make popular is an advantage for Putin, don't you agree? I have a feeling you're arguing out of stubbornness. My original point was that announcing the Smart Voting lists in the last moment can be useful, I think gave some good reasons for it.
- akho 5y ago“One per district” is 225, “all popular” in contested districts is, like, maybe 70? Smart voting does not create new popular candidates. It’s a way to concentrate the 5 % they can access (or 2 %, if badly mismanaged by publishing the list too late) in an efficient way.
- gnull 5y agoPlease back the numbers up with data.
- Sideyon 5y agoBut there was nothing to hide, everyone knew that it will be basically "vote for Communists".
- gnull 5y agoDon't they need to announce a concrete Communist to vote for? Last time I checked the number of Communists in Russia was strictly greater than one.
- akho 5y agoOne Communist Party candidate per electoral district, yes.
- gnull 5y agoIt's not true. I checked and I see plenty of Yabloko candidates being suggested
- jakobdabo 5y agoAfter that day candidates can not withdraw from the elections (that's the law), so the government can't threaten the recommended candidates.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoYou have these "silent days" in most countries. When we have elections in France, we just look at Belgian or Swiss newspapers to see how the votes are going on. They do not care about these days, only French newspapers and media do. Twitter does not, Facebook does not, Telegram does not - nobody cares except for France. How is Russia different?
- akho 5y agoYou either believe that this regulation makes sense, or you don’t. France, apparently, is in a situation where nobody cares enough to enforce, but taking the law off the books is not politically feasible. I do not know whether that’s a good thing. As a Russian: the election has a limited relevance beyond a certain type of signaling. The majority of United Russia is largely guaranteed by the “electoral sultanates”, so votes cast now will not impact new legislation over the next five years. If your purpose is to signal things, being morally clean is more important than the number of votes you manage to achieve. If a law is reasonable, and a norm in multiple other well-regarded systems, it makes sense to comply.
- thriftwy 5y agoIt could still allow for a few independent-ish senators via single mandate district system. If it is allowed to run fairly at least in some locales. Source: observing one.
- BrandoElFollito 5y ago