How is the Russian election rigged?

17 comments

1. More likely his inner circle let’s the ballot workers keep their (regular) jobs, doesn’t throw them into prison for some fake treason charge or doesn’t kill them. All three are pretty good motivators in a corrupt dictatorship.

   And obviously, all three are guesses, with no sources whatsoever.

2. Since it’s Russia, this applies 100% “The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.” Stalin. He seems like a guy who meant what he said.

3. A lot of ways, buy mainly by Putin using the power if the government to make shure the only opposition on the voting ballot are opposition parties in name only.

4. This one will most probably be falsified through the online voting that was available for the first time in presidential elections in 20 something regions here. Plus the voting process in the “new regions” is pretty fucked, and has been going on since late February for soldiers and civilians (dates vary specifically on location). So I think they can just draw a number at this point, as there’s no way to independently verify the electronic votes.

   I’ll share a story with you. I registered my grandma for online voting as she is pretty old and has trouble walking. It was supposed to be done in advance, so you couldn’t then come and vote in person at your local voting station. So today I helped her vote, and shortly after went to vote myself in person. I’m currently living in a small community, so most folks know each other. As I arrived at there, one of the voting committee woman asked me why I’m alone, obviously referring to the rest of my family and my grandma. I said that she voted online, to which she replied surprised that they haven’t got the info about it, meaning she’s in the lists and can come get her ballot to vote in person. So technically, if I didn’t mention it she could have gone and voted 2 times no problem. What will happen to her ballot? Will it be filled with the “correct” choice and thrown at the end of the day – idk.

   Another funny fact was that as I existed the voting place, I was approached by a guy with a badge (looked like one of the observers). He introduced himself and said that they were doing a “social study”. He had a wooden tablet, the one with a clip and what looked like partially filled printed tables. I was expecting some questions on policy/politics or social issues, but noooope. The one and only question was “who did you vote for” lol. I smiled and said it was a secret. The dude’s friendly smile disappeared and he walked away without saying anything. So it seems they were literally keeping lists of who voted for whom, pretty fucked up stuff.

   Edit: as a couple people pointed out below, the guy in the last paragraph may have been simply conducting an exit poll survey. The whole interaction felt a bit weird to me at that moment. Though till now I didn’t know that that’s how exit polls work, so most probably my ass got overly paranoid with all the stories about arrests and the heavy local pro government propaganda lately. Just thought it would be fair to point it out, as there could have been a mistake of judgement on my part. I want to keep things honest and clear.

5. If it was widely known how he rigged it, it wouldn’t be quite as much of a success, just like any other rigged election.

   My guess is, they have every vote counted at a municipal level and then, on the country level, slightly work the numbers so it’s just enough or a landslide victory, depending on the general outcome. Remember the 2011 election Putin won? Various observers from abroad reported suspected fraud and manipulation, but they just couldn’t verify it.

6. 1. The “system” forces local offices to just write whatever numbers they were told to
   2. No real opponents in the ballots – they’re all banned/killed/arrested
   3. Voting through governmental website – it’s results have nothing in common with reality
   4. Putting hundreds of thousands fake ballots into the boxes
   5. 3-day voting. And guess who guard the ballot boxes at night? You’re right – nobody
   6. Fake candidates proactively decided not to send any observers to the offices
   7. Fake candidates don’t even try to pretend they want to win, their campaigns are awful at the very least
   8. The “system” forces all voters dependent on the government to vote when and where they were told to, and then check with their “supervisor”. And there are A LOT of such dependants in Russia, as most of the economy is government-driven
   9. Bots and public speakers try to discourage opposition from coming and voting. Mostly by spreading depressive thoughts like “it will change nothing” among them
   10. “New regions” are a true black box, as nobody can guarantee any rights there, even secret voting. The amount of people living there is several times bigger than the actual number of people living there
   11. Dead and non-existent people magically “vote” this time

   And some other tricks I’ve probably forgotten.

   Edit:

   12. Absolutely no media access for the critics. Hundreds of thousands websites are blocked. 10-year sentences for those who dare to speak up.

7. There is nothing real about Russian elections. Ballots and electronic votes have no meaning.

   The election is just an absurd drama about democracy in Russia. Everyone knows that. Also the vast majority of Russians who have an indoor toilet and/or internet knows that.

   The reason why Putin wants an election drama is because it allows him to say that the Russian people want all the atrocities that he himself commits. Putin makes the entire Russian people guilty of his crimes. “I did what the people wanted me to do, just look at the election results”

8. – no independent observers
   – no access to camera because in previous years people were caught falsifying the ballots
   – online voting

9. Putin can effectively do whatever he wants. If he distributes a list with predetermined results that’s what the officials will write down. Whoever tries to go public dies of a “freak accident”.

   But he goes the extra mile and makes sure that his true opponents die of “freak accidents” or are in jail. The people that actually make it to the elections are mostly not real candidates. It’s all just for shows

10. Ok, my source is I am a Russian (recent) emigrant that was always interested in politics.

    1. Election commissions are staffed by government workers, who get their paychecks from Moscow. You either get directly told how much percent everyone has to get or its just implied. From there your on your own. They used to just catch people stuffing a bunch of pre filled ballots before. Not sure it still happens but if you dont have diligent election observers someone who spends the whole day near the ballot box might get some bonus V.V. ballots down there. Plus all the usual voting tricks like people voting multiple times which is much easier to do when the people who have to prevent you from doing that are actively assisting.

    2. People who work for the government OR for government corp OR are currently enlisted somewhere usually get told to vote for Putin or whatever. Sometimes they check and make you take a picture of a filled ballot. Your boss and your bosses boss might get in trouble if their specific poll place doesn’t reach required numbers. You might lose your bonus or get fired or get a stern talking to.

    3. In the last couple of years they extended the voting window. Used to be a specific day, now its 3. Before highly motivated protest voters could impact numbers if turnout was low, but now its harder.

    4. Final coup de grâce in terms of direct rigging is Distant Electronic Voting (ДЭГ). Russia got a site, gosuslugi.ru which is actually really useful, you can access most government services through it. You might add different documents to your profile (birth certificate, passport number, social security number) and activate 2FA which “improves” your profile, allowing you to access more services which require them. With a good enough profile you can request to vote remotely through the portal. Tom Scott has a video why internet voting is A TERRIBLE IDEA in the best of times, but when people counting votes are suspect this is a machine to win elections. Its a complete black box, we’ve got no idea how many people actually voted for real, but numbers are there. (As an anecdote, my user profile was used to vote in United Russia primary. As you might imagine, I would never vote in united Russia primary). In Moscow’s most protest heavy areas no opposition candidate won in municipal elections after winning heavily in the previous one.

    These are just direct ways of rigging Russian elections. You also got indirect ways:

    1. You have to be registered. To get registered you have to have 500 people in your campaign sorta and they have to collect 300,000 verified signatures (with passport data), of which no more than 7,5k can be collected in one “region” (so you can’t have a popular Moscow politician just campaign in Moscow and get enough there). Then you submit those signatures and Tsentrizbirkom verifies them. How do they do it? Whichever way they please. A program might scan and digitize you passport info wrong and decide that you live on a street that doesn’t exist. Or your own name is spelled wrong. If you got through they have some nebulous “handwriting expert” that compares your signature to your handwriting on the date and if they think it doesn’t match your signature is thrown out. They might say that a whole slew of signatures were made by 1 person and throw out a whole page except for 1. Just a whole bunch of ways to reject your signatures. And you can’t do jack, even people whose signature was rejected couldn’t get it reinstated in person.

    2. Putin has also spent last 20 years intimidating, killing and just preventing people from entering politics. You’re either pushed out somehow (Navalny, Kashin, Nemtsov) or get absorbed if you know what’s good for you.

    3. Media wont give you a time of day. As an example, one very brave paper printed news of Navanys death and got most of the printing ceased. All independent media is either closed or forced abroad. Prime tv channels won’t listen to you (but you couldn’t even collect the signatures, so who the fuck are you to complain?)

    I think you’ve got the picture. Closest we’ve got was in 2013 in Moscow mayoral election where Navalny got 27% almost forcing a second tour. But kremlin learned from that and wouldn’t event let anyone get close again.

    There are more ways, I think I got the most important ones. If you got any questions feel free to ask.

11. Citizens cast the votes. Then people working for the government count them. Other people working for the government verify the count. Then, the result is announced.

    In a country like Russia, there is no way to check whether the numbers announced correspond to the ballots collected.

12. One thing that many people don’t understand – there are f***ing a lot people, who really support Putin. It would be enough for him to get 50% of votes. But he wants more, he wants to show that people a absolutely unified around him, that’s why he uses falsifications.

    If we are talking about offline votes – majority members of election commities are his supporters. He not like pay them money directly, but… they just execute orders from higher chiefs, because thay wants to keep and promote their career. And also because they think it is a good, right orders

13. Imagine you are a dictator and want to win with 88% of the votes. What will you do? Probably hold fake elections and afterwards declare you won with 88%.

14. Because it’s Russia and this is Reddit.

    The problem is not so much the election being rigged. The problem is there is not much to choose between. I know many Russians and even if they aren’t fans of Putin in any way, they vote for him because he is the only serious candidate.

15. It’s sad that so much money and time is wasted on this election, when everyone knows Russia is a dictatorship.

16. I saw tons of videos showing ballot stuffing, from this election and 2018 as well. They just throw in prepared ballots. This is why you might jokingly have >100% voter turnout although many people claim that they didn’t go. They just registered their vote as one of the fake ones.

17. I believe you are overthinking it.
    It’s as simple as making voting a gimmic. People overseeing the voting process collects them for counting and most likely just burn. In the end they just show pre-prepared result in TV and that it.