Faking the Vote

Analyses of Russia's vote suggests about a third of Putin's ballots may have been falsified.

Vladimir Putin being interviewed by Tucker Carlson in February. (Presidential Administration of Russia/Creative Commons 4.0)

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.