Faking the Vote
Analyses of Russia's vote suggests about a third of Putin's ballots may have been falsified.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin's sham vote this past weekend offers little in the way for traditional political analysis. The other candidates were for show; last month, antiwar candidate Boris Nadezhdin was banned from running. In a regime that is almost entirely opaque, it is impossible to say what comes next, such as another mobilization for troops in Ukraine. The result is suspect: authorities announced that Putin garnered a record 87% of the vote, with 77% turnout. These numbers put him in league with other despots in Central Asia and the Middle East, who use high numbers to justify despotism.
A methodology developed by Ivan Shukshin, a researcher and activist with the Golos vote monitoring NGO, offers convincing clues on how much the vote may have been faked.
_12.jpg){kind=link}