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."
Re:s/Russia/America/g (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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?
There's no question fraud is happening. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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)
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".
Re:I see what your Putin down, not buying it... (Score:3, Informative)
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 are mainly supported by old people who want to go back to the familiar old system) and ultra nationalists (who are something of a joke, but a funny one). The West-supported folks we see on news here basically command support of those they pay off and no one else.
The main complaint seems to be with United Russia basically taking its power for granted and having stopped reforming, fighting corruption and raising standard of living. This is a very valid concern, but there are simply no alternatives, so it seems that disenfranchised voters see that there is no alternative and simply don't show up to vote. This resulted in low turnout and lower amount of votes for United Russia, so relatively small amount of fraud "corrected" the numbers to allow them to maintain majority.
P.S. I'm not russian, but I speak the language fluently and pick on quite a bit from reading news in russian.
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.
Re:Ten years since the USSR fell (Score:2, Informative)
The wall came down in 1989 ...
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.
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!
Re:Forced Voting? (Score:4, Informative)