Publicly Available Russian Election Results Hint At Fraud 304
gotfork writes "As some Russians protest the results of the recent election, several commentators (Russian), have started looking at the results which are posted to the election commission web site and there's very strong evidence of fraud. Voter turnout correlates strongly with percent voting for the ruling party, United Russia, and there are a lot of polling stations with nearly 100% turnout and 100% voting for United Russia in some unusual places. The raw data is posted so you can do your own analysis."
Forced Voting? (Score:3)
Do they do that at all in Russia? Still, 100%...lol. Putin doesn't even care anymore.
Re:Forced Voting? (Score:5, Funny)
What, you don't think United Russia would score 100% in Chechnya?
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Which is why I said "lol".
I'm curious as to if they actually got people to vote and just lied (or fudged the numbers or changed the votes afterward) or if they just straight up lied about everything.
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Which is why I said "lol".
I'm curious as to if they actually got people to vote and just lied (or fudged the numbers or changed the votes afterward) or if they just straight up lied about everything.
Lenin On Line; He says congratulations.
Re:Forced Voting? (Score:5, Funny)
Lenin On Line
In Putin Russia, Mail have You?
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How can anybody (fx Slashdot) would describe 99.51% voting for United Russia in Chechnya as "hint at fraud" instead of the more correct "unambiguous evidence of fraud"? Is Slashdot owned by the Russian dictatorship?
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I was just curious as to the intertwining mechanics. No shit it's obvious fraud. Or rather, needs an entirely new term.
Re:Forced Voting? (Score:4, Funny)
I for one feel like we should have more passive-aggressive editorializing, especially by using the old /. standby phrase "it will be interesting..."
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> Then we get wankers like you who bitch and bitch and bitch about how Slashdot should editorialize and sensationalize their summaries.
How is stating the obvious to "editorialize and sensationalize"?
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Russian nationalists in a province with mostly non-Russian population?
Re:Forced Voting? (Score:5, Funny)
It takes Russia a longtime to catch up. Now they are finally equal to the US in 2000.
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It takes Russia a longtime to catch up. Now they are finally equal to the US in 2000.
They're still years away from equaling the US. They may have figured out election fraud, but we hide it much better here. Not completely, but much better.
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It takes Russia a longtime to catch up. Now they are finally equal to the US in 2000.
They're still years away from equaling the US. They may have figured out election fraud, but we hide it much better here. Not completely, but much better.
I keep waiting for the day the GOP has their IPO on the NYSE. Might as well just get it all out there in the open and stop mucking about, begging corporate money for favours.
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Where will you go for shares of the DNC, then? The WIC office?
Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Tax (Score:5, Informative)
Those horrible, corrupt foreign Governments.
30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010 [ibtimes.com]
"Despite a growing federal deficit and the widespread economic stability that has swept the U.S since 2008, the companies in question managed to accumulate profits of $164 billion between 2008 and 2010, while receiving combined tax rebates totaling almost $11 billion. Moreover, Public Campaign reports these companies spent about $476 million during the same period to lobby the U.S. Congress, as well as another $22 million on federal campaigns, while in some instances laying off employees and increasing executive compensation."
To keep profits inflated by capturing legislation, favorable to their businesses. Free market, my arsehol3.
And still some people want even bigger government (Score:4, Insightful)
The bigger the government, the more this will happen.
Imagine a government that didn't have the power to create entire new industries, the power to pick winners and losers in the commercial sector, through regulation or legislation. The corporations that make money through this now wouldn't have anybody to lobby, they wouldn't have any influence.
Re:Forced Voting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Forced Voting? (Score:4, Informative)
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Not really much point in an offtopic response to such an obvious partisan hack, but...
Did you even read the story? He's talking about how when he was in 8th grade, he wasn't a good student precisely because he liked basketball more than anything else. He implies that ethics was, in fact, more important than basketball but because he wasn't a very good student he couldn't appreciate it at the time.
But whatever. Go on trashing him over stupid shit like this instead of his actual policies, because you know,
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Do they do that at all in Russia? Still, 100%...lol. Putin doesn't even care anymore.
The Russians did a lot of the same things the Iranian regime did, when they utterly cooked the election so overdone that official counts showed more votes than voters in many cities. Of course, when the people screamed their indignation they beat, kicked, shot and arrested them. Gives you a pretty good idea how ruthless the Revolutionary Guard are about keeping power. After a few arrests and dispersing protesters it's good to see the Russians aren't using the same brutal tactics, to the extent they were
In Russia,,, (Score:5, Funny)
the Elections vote for you!
someone had to say it
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Russians Know What Russia Is (Score:5, Funny)
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The ad should be retitled "Russia Doesn't Even Bother to Pretend to Have a Legitimate Election." Why would they? It's Russia. Historically speaking, it'd be weird to the point of unsettling if it weren't rotten to the core.
Hell, it seems like every time things start looking up for the Russians, somebody comes in to actively undo everything positive, and crushes them further. I know some guys who defected to the US during the Cold War... they never seem to run out of horror stories to share about how much life sucked there, but what constantly amazes me was that they felt they got out of there before it REALLY went to hell...
Putin assures you that everything is fine (Score:3)
Look, he's even offering to throw a tea party for all of you with doubts. Drink up!
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In unrelated news, there is an unexpected increase in purchases of polonium 209, an obscure radioactive isotope.
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This tea is radiant!
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And you of course realize that he's currently running for President again, right?
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yes, but he's now the Prime Minister... since 2008.
Tell me about Russian politics (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone tell me/us about Russian politics. Does it matter?
For example, here in the US, there is one party, with one set of goals (globalism, imperial global warfare everywhere, war on drugs, tax relief for the 1% and F the 99%, deindustrialize the country, expand the parasitical financial sector at all costs, etc). We have two independent marketing departments that put on a huge show to pacify the population into thinking it matters which marketing department did a better job, D or R. But, it doesn't rea
Re:Tell me about Russian politics (Score:5, Informative)
What Russians are protesting right now is not who gets elected, but how they get elected. The protesters draw from a wide swath of political parties who agree on very little except that they want free and fair elections.
The truth is that many Russians do think exactly the way you do. My mother-in-law is a Russian living in Moscow. She thinks maybe there was voter fraud, but only a little and not enough to matter. Putin is maybe corrupt, but only a little and look at all the good things he's done! Her overriding argument, though, is that there isn't anyone else worth electing, which is exactly how Putin has managed to arrange things.
It's easy to be cynical here in America, but we do have real choices and who gets elected does matter. It would matter in Russia too if a real opposition candidate could live long enough to make it to election day.
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So, step one in the "Becoming a Russian Candidate" process is shoot Putin before he shoots you?
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You do? Are you sure? You have a two-party system, completely rigged in favor of corporate elite. The only choice you have is who's lobby will be more powerful for next few years.
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Just because both sides favor corporatism does not mean that they do not differ in other ways. Corporatism may be the most important aspect to *you*, but not to everyone.
Moreover, there are factions within each party with different goals. The Tea Party is one example, even if you don't agree with them. Voting for president is never going to be meaningful - the office is representing too many different people. But between your senator, representative, governor, state representative, mayor, and city councilme
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Yes, "real" choice means having an actual choice, more then choosing from two storefronts representing exactly the same shop. Perfect choice would mean having a separate shop for every issue, and I don't think anyone has been asking for that. I know I didn't.
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2011 in a nutshell: (Score:5, Insightful)
Russians are on the street protesting.
Americans are on the street protesting.
Europeans are on the street protesting.
The middle east is on the street protesting.
Africa is on the street protesting.
Dose anyone know a place where people are actually happy with their government?
Re:2011 in a nutshell: (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not entirely true. Apparently the whole of Russia is so delighted with their government they have, to a man, voted them all back in again.
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Can you name a period of time where people have been happy with their government?
You don't seem to know a lot about history. In WWI, people volunteered to give their life for their government. (Although that changed after the war just dragged on and on)
Look at congressional approval ratings: http://www.gallup.com/poll/145238/congress-job-approval-rating-worst-gallup-history.aspx [gallup.com]
But that was last year. This year:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/congressional_performance [rasmussenreports.com]
North Korea (Score:5, Funny)
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North Korea is the only Korea.
(According to Democratic People's Republic of Korea).
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Russians are on the street protesting. Americans are on the street protesting. Europeans are on the street protesting. The middle east is on the street protesting. Africa is on the street protesting. Dose anyone know a place where people are actually happy with their government?
Corruption Perceptions Index [wikipedia.org]
Eurozone [wikipedia.org]
Pick anyone that is high on the first list but not on the second list.
Granted everyone has their own sets of challenges to deal with.
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Oversimplified, protests are for different reasons. They are connected, but not fully.
Russians protest against their leadership don't care about their voice, and what most important - they haven't delivered nothing they promised in exchange. So it has moral and also quite practical basis for Russians anger.
Americans and Europeans this year protest mostly against *system* - t.i. you can elect different people, they can try to fix it, but in the end system will prevail. See what happened to UK PM Cameron when
Yes Belgians (Score:2)
Well, for most of 2011 at least.
For those not following the news, Belgium was without a government for the longest time in history, closing in on two years before FINALLY a government formed at the end of this year.
Iceland! (Score:3, Interesting)
Russians are on the street protesting.
Americans are on the street protesting.
Europeans are on the street protesting.
The middle east is on the street protesting.
Africa is on the street protesting.
Dose anyone know a place where people are actually happy with their government?
Iceland - they nationalised the banks and told the IMF to fuck off.
They devalued their currency, and their economy is now growing.
The President and Prime Minister are very popular.
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given our track record i would hide too
Election Commission Website link (Score:2)
I see what your Putin down, not buying it... (Score:3)
How is releasing results that confirm blatant voter fraud helping their argument? This is only going to bolster the opposition who'll hold these results up and say "See... see how they fucked us all!"
It appears to me that Putin and his political machine are if anything, not stupid. They want to stay in power, indefinitely. This does not achieve this aim.
I can only imagine that there's an angle to this story that my westernized perspective and extremely poor understanding of Russian culture/politics can't quite grasp.
Please Russian slashdotters... please explain this!
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For the record, the only ones "doubting legitimacy" of United Russia are people abroad who really want to doubt it. When you ask people on the street, you essentially have two tiers: those who support it, and those who think that progress has stalled in last few years and they want to shake it up (i.e. protest movement).
Putin will still get elected, legitimately. According to Gallup he still has ~50-60% popular support in adult population (which is slowly dwindling). His main competition are communists (who
There'd be no question of fraud if... (Score:2)
...they'd got Diebold machines in.
Videos documenting election fraud (Score:3)
Votes given before the voting started:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzOXn3wRjJU [youtube.com]
Here's one with english subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLs8kv3u1hw [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Hw-5y9fy4zU [youtube.com]
There's no question fraud is happening. (Score:5, Informative)
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sheesh. pepper spray too expensive the the russians?
at least we can show them how we control our OWN people when the gov needs to do a smackdown.
no need to fire someone; just chemically subdue them if they don't follow your wishes!
Just enough fraud to win (Score:2)
Looking at the totals at the bottom of the article [samarcandanalytics.com], the fraud would only lower the votes for Putin's United Russia by 6 percentage units. However, this would be enough to make a coalition of the second, third and fourth party larger than United Russia.
Election Fraud (Score:2)
Yes, it's all fraud, including pro-Putin protests (Score:5, Informative)
Of-course it is all fraud, there are plenty of videos shot during the elections of so called 'carousel' (merry go-round) voters, who were paid to go and vote multiple times in dozens of locations for United Russia. There are cases of just stealing the final results and replacing them with fake pro-United Russia results. There are cases of pre-made voting ballots being thrown into the voting urns, all this is true.
But after the anti-Putin protest that happened last week, with over 40 thousand people attending just in Moscow (video) Here is a video of the anti-anti-Putin protesters (so pro-United Russia protest), that just happened, and this so called 'protest' was shown on the First Channel (main pro-government TV channel), saying that there were 25 thousand people in the crowd, which is nonsense, but more interestingly what kind of people were there [youtube.com]. In that video the attendees are asked why did they come to this 'protest' and they either don't respond, or they are drunk and respond with pure nonsense, or they barely speak Russian (don't forget, United Russia) and they don't even understand the question well, but they answer that they are here at work or from their work.
So it's a sham, everything, start to finish (related videos to that one show people being invited to these pro-Putin protests with promises of money). Then there is this video, where people are being paid just after the pro-Putin protest [youtube.com]. A girl in the video says: this is how we sell out Russia.
Yes, it's a sham.
Pushkin summarized it nicely in 1823: (Score:2)
You will not wake to honor’s call.
What need have herds for gifts of freedom?
They’re used to shears and butcher’s stall.
(Original in Russian here [alexanderpushkin.com]. Could not pass
Sigh. Four years ago, United Russia fraudulently got the 2/3 majority in the current parliament, in the same way, with all the same-looking statistics. This parliament passed, without a contest, some "nice" constitution changes (extending the presidential term from fou
Positive moments (Score:3)
1. Very detailed (down to individual voting stations) voting results were made available, although they were used to do similar analysis after the past elections.
2. United Russia was barely able to get the majority in Duma, even with all the "irregularities"
3. Internet was used to organize a mass rally (30-50k people in Moscow, thousands in other places). This one is a first. And these were not radicals that are happy to rally for whatever cause, but middle class - people that didn't go to the streets since 1991.
This is the first time in a while I have some hope for the future of Russia.
Russia believes in the secret ballot (Score:3)
In Russia the belief in the secret ballot is so strong that not even the voter gets to see the ballot before it goes in the box.
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Re:Ten years since the USSR fell (Score:5, Informative)
1988 is when the wall came down. 1991 is when it was dissolved. 20 years this month.
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20 years ago on Christmas day!
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The wall came down in 1989 ...
Re:s/Russia/America/g (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yes. But 100% turnout from places that range from Apathetic to outright hatred of his Regime, and a majority vote for him? That's an entirely different level of bullshit than what Scott Walker could accomplish.
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These are pretty different situations, i mean no one in the states would be ballsy enough to try to go "ahh fuck it, just put in we got all the votes from everyone".
In the US they have to at least try to be SLIGHTLY subtle.
Re:s/Russia/America/g (Score:5, Funny)
Our American leaders know we won't believe obvious fabrications like those goofy Russian yokels, so they temper the vote fraud just enough to fly under the radar. And thus they demonstrate how much more they respect the American people's intelligence than the Russian leaders respect their people's intelligence.
Suck it, Russia! USA Number 1!
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America isn't a democracy it's a “limited-government constitutional republic.”
see: http://users.law.capital.edu/dmayer/Blog/blogIndex.asp?entry=20050606.asp [capital.edu]
I know wikipedia says "Federal presidential constitutional republic" But it gave up being a "Representative democracy" of the people when it erroneously allowed the fiction of corporate personhood to persist.
Re:s/Russia/America/g (Score:5, Informative)
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Seriously. HAY GUISE LETS TALK ABOUT ME.
Or is he a Putin supporter?
Re:s/Russia/America/g (Score:5, Insightful)
1. false equivalency. The fraud involved there is quantitatively and qualitatively worse.
2. irrelevant. Illegal and immoral behavior in one country does not make it OK in another.
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This is about Russia, not the US. Stay on topic.
You must be new here.
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I will take off my math skills for Putin!
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Re:Electronic Voting (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, they just stop you from voting if you are in a group likely to vote the wrong way [guardian.co.uk].
And we wonder why the US can't manage to get 50% turnout even in a presidential election year?
In Texas, student ID cards are no longer be valid for voting; neither are ID cards issued by the federal Veterans Administration. All those students and war vets need to do is go buy a gun: concealed weapons permits are acceptable at the polls.
Republicans all sing from the same hymnal on this one: voting must be tightly controlled to prevent fraud. Never mind that there is no fraud. Indeed, the Brennan Center found that voter fraud is so "exceedingly rare" that "one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud." Mickey Mouse was not allowed to register. Paul Newman did not vote from beyond the grave. Hordes of undocumented Mexicans have not stuffed ballot boxes (though a great many new, legal Latino voters have registered in Florida, Texas and other large states).
But why let the facts get in the way of rigging an election?
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This is on a far higher level of corruption. This is outright forging every piece of the election results.
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And we wonder why the US can't manage to get 50% turnout even in a presidential election year?
I guarantee requiring an ID card is not the reason the US can't get 50% voter turnout.
Re:Electronic Voting (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, a cursory google search on the terms "Indiana 2008 voter fraud" shows that... oh hey, not a SINGLE verifiable or reputable news source went anywhere near this nonsensical lie of a story.
A lot of right-wing nutcase blogs, and of course that fraudulent liar Breitbart (known mostly for faking videos himself) all over it. And if we follow your link we find they are... ah, yes. "The New American", front group for those rabid nutwingers the John Birch Society.
Re:Electronic Voting (Score:5, Informative)
If Fox were fabricating these stories out of thin air...
They are. They admit that they do. A Florida appellate court upheld their right to do so in 2003, courtesy of the First Amendment.
Wait... you mean... you didn't know??!!! You've been ... you've actually been believing Fox News? No, really? SRSLY?? wow. just... wow. What a mindjob!
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Re:Electronic Voting (Score:5, Informative)
You're alluding to a petition to put them on the ballot. ALL petitions have signatures that don't add up, even those which put Republican candidates on the ballot. Once the "fake" signatures are removed, they count how many legitimate ones remain, whether the petition is for a Republican candidate, a Democratic candidate, a ballot initiative, or any other activity in which citizens can present petitions. The reasons for the "fake" signatures vary: sometimes people just write bogus names while exiting a supermarket, sometimes they write their real name, but happen not to be registered voters (and so the signature doesn't count), and so on.
To put this in the same category as voter fraud is ridiculous. Also, the belief that only Obama's and Clinton's campaigns suffered this phenomenon is, err, "ignorant".
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VA cards are FEDERALLY issued. But that shouldn't matter, apparently, if your goal (like many Republicans) is to disenfranchise people who serve/served their country honorably in the military.
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All this talk about valid IDs and you Americans still oppose the idea of a standard personal ID card...
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Actually, YES. Military veterans who can't operate a car due to blinding or paralysis or leg amputation, for starters. Republicans have also been on the forefront of trying to get as many absentee military ballots thrown out as possible, since the rank-and-file are paid shit wages thanks to the machinations of those same Republicans and tend, being poor and supporting families on wages that require public assistance (fully 40% of the US military families are so poor they qualify for food stamps!), to vote D
No, that was the Democrats (Score:3)
The majority of the military still votes Republican, so the Democrats are the ones you will find challenging their absentee ballots. It was a big stink in Florida in 2000, where Bush won largely on those absentee ballots. The Democrats were trying to throw out as many of them as possible.
If there was any effort to prevent your aunt from voting, it would have been by the Democrats in order to hinder that Republican voting bloc.
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Having married an Army brat, having dozens of friends and neighbors currently serving (most of whom have families), and having served for years myself, I can say YOU have no place to say I have no idea what I'm talking about.
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Who cares if the VA card is federally issued? So is my DoD badge, and I can't use that as ID for voting. Elections are state run. And every active military or
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Almost every bit of polling data since the 70's shows a clear trend that the lower the income the more likely you are to vote Democrat. In 2006 the breakeven point was somewhere around a family income of 50k but below that almost 60% of votes went to Dems. And it's not like the rich were overwhelmingly Repub; above 50K it was roughly a 52/48 split for them.
A similar pattern holds true for education levels with people with high school or below predominately voting Dem and those with some University or Bach
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Ironic that he was on a show about stupid people doing stupid things.
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Yes. If they really aren't concerned with international intervention or bottom-up revolution that is exactly what they would do to remain in power.
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The US won't put voting results online. Won't make them public. Won't allow analysis.
Some precincts do. If yours doesn't, change your local laws.
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The US won't put voting results online. Won't make them public. Won't allow analysis.
Wow, we're worse than RUSSIA!!!
I suppose maybe before we whine about THEIR elections we should make ours as transparent and fair.
Good luck with that.
E
huh? In almost every state in the union you can watch the unofficial counts come in live to the secretary of state, and you can read the vote totals anywhere else you want.... Many voting precincts physically post the voter registration rolls on the walls, so you can estimate turnout just by looking to see who hasn't signed . . .
Don't get me wrong, fraud is hardly unknown in US elections, but it generally only comes into play when the vote is very, very, close. Electronic voting machine issues aside, w