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Graph Shows Fraud in Russian Elections
gaika writes "A graph in the best traditions of Edward Tufte shows how the voting was rigged in Russian parliament elections. Initially some regions were showing higher than 100% attendance, but later on everything was corrected, or way too much corrected, as the correlation between winning party's vote and attendance now stands at 90%. I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient."
2/3 of the Russian Duma (parliament) has the authority to amend the Constitution, and of course they want to be able to do that by themselves. And they barely made it - they will have 310 +/- 5 seats out of 450.
As I understand it, Putin has been reasonably effective at crushing the Oligarchies that were running rampant throughout Russia, this has made him a bit unpopular with the current US government because a lot of those Oligarchs were business partners. Unfortunately, his method of stamping them out has been largely to just take over the businesses directly. This has been a boon for the government's bottom line, but in the long run it stifles growth, however the people love it because they're finally seeing some of their country's wealth and frankly I can't blame them. I have no doubt in a few years Putin (or his successor) will finally toss away the pretense of being a Democracy and really start putting the screws to the people, but in the short term they are way better than the previous owners.
I read the internet for the articles.
You might look at some of Steven F. Freeman's papers, like this one: Polling Bias or Corrupted Count? (pdf file).
Nope. Just the good old US corporate media. "Nothing to see here, just a bunch of conspiracy nuts on the internet"
His argument boils down to this:
There shouldn't be a correlation at all between voter turnout percentage and the percentage that voted for Putin's party.
It's like saying "all of candidate A's supporters voted, only half of candidate B's supporters voted (or were allowed, enabled, not intimidated into not voting, etc.).
They need 2/3rds in the parliament to amend constitution.
There is no statistic to determine fraud, almost by definition. The various statistical tests look for improbable departures from expectations, and the fraudster tries to modify the data in a way that doesn't look improbable.
Given we have few datasets of fraudulent vs non-fraudulent numbers, it is hard to generate hard numbers. Instead, we look at tests the fraudsters didn't consider or understand, and these tests usually show such extreme numbers that any statistician would assume the data was manipulated. For example:
1. Faked biology data (several known examples) - means look good, but higher order stats are way outside a normal distribution. Luckily, you can repeat the experiments, and see the repeats don't show the reported results.
2. Faked accounting data (tons of examples.) Most fakers make really basic mistakes. E.g. around 27%? of financial numbers should begin with 1, faked data usually has the wrong leading number distribution. Again, forensic accountants dig here and usualy hit paydirt.
3. Image manipulation. Again, the manipulator gets the first order stats right, but leaves a mess in terms of higher order stats (local vs global noise.)
I worked at the election committee for the last elections of Russian president. The head of the committee gave me 10 passport (which used as IDs in Russia) numbers to register. I never saw the passwords, I never saw the people. The head filled out the bulletins for those 10 people (all votes for Putin) and went into a voting booth.
I did not see much else, but I am sure it was not a unique case. Also, our district was rather small, in larger districts they probably used more "dead souls".
I am not at all surprised at the fraud in last elections. In fact, I would be surprised if there was not any. As for why - I think (and this is my speculation) each committee must report at least x% (x >> 50) votes for Putin in the last president elections or for Unified Russia in these elections to show a good work. Thus the fraud despite the fact that the elections were decided WAY before the votes were counted.
In general one would expect the dots to form vaguely horizontal bands across the graph. In other words, in districts where there was 50% turnout, 50% of the votes would be for Putin's party, and in districts with 90% turnout, approximately the same percentage (50%) of votes would be for Putin's party. That's what you wold expect from fair voting.
On the other hand, if voter turnout was, say 40-60%, and you were stuffing the ballot boxes with an additional 0-30% votes - all of them for Putin's party, you would get the kind of pattern you see in that graph. You could also get this pattern if people were being forced to go and vote for Putin's party.
There were complaints thet the ballots were hard to use statewide but the Dems chose to request recounts only in areas where they expected to gain proportionately more. Gore's request would have carried more weight if he had requested recounts statewide & not just in Dem dominated areas. In the end, the supreme court shut down the recounts because this method of selectively recounting meant that miscounted Dem votes would have counted more than miscounted Rep votes. However, statewide recounts would have taken even longer & would have been very unlikely to have reversed Florida's pro Bush vote.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
As someone else mentioned - Putin's party was going to win majority in a rigged or fair election. But in a fair election they most likely wouldn't get a super majority to push through constitutional changes.
The Beslan school hostage situation was in late August (or early September) 2004 - about 3 years and 3 months ago. Now, maybe that's still not current, but it's very different from the 6 years you were exaggerating to in your post.
Yet, why would Czar Vladimir Putin go through all this trouble to produce an impressive showing at the polls? He is already quite popular. His party, United Russia, could have easily won control of the Duma without the election rigging.
"The Economist" has finally provided an answer to this puzzling question. "The answer almost certainly lies in the ever more vicious--and open--rivalry among the Kremlin's political clans. Perhaps Mr Putin upset so many rich and powerful people that the prospect of losing control over the transition of power may simply have been too dangerous for his inner circle, and for himself. For all his talk about foreign threats and domestic enemies, what Mr Putin really fears is his entourage and a war among the clans. Winston Churchill once described the Kremlin's political tussles as being like a fight among bulldogs under a carpet: outsiders hear plenty of growling but have few clues about the victor's identity until it emerges."
Renegade political factions (run by former and current members of the FSB, successor of the KGB) operate within and outside the Kremlin. Each faction is like a gang, and the gangs kill each other. They answer to no one. So far, Putin has used his power to keep the factions under control.
Putin needed an impressive showing in the election in order to demonstrate his political power -- to the siloviki. He controls the United Russia party. Since the party won more than 66% of the seats in the Duma (due to the rigged election), the party -- and Putin -- can alter the constitution at will.
Of course, Putin is gambling that his scheme will work. He may lose the gamble. One of the renegade factions may assassinate him.
In this context, you can understand the comments by Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for releasing the Eastern Europeans from the yoke of Soviet oppression. He has criticized the steadily eroding freedoms that he initiated in Russia in the late 1980s, but he has refrained from directly criticizing Czar Vladimir Putin.
Putin is indeed a czar, but he is a far better ruler than one of the thugs in the siloviki. These thugs likely killed both Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya. Even if Putin wanted to solve their murders, he has no power to do so. If he attempted to find the killers, then he may be killed.
P.S.
"The Economist" seems to provide much better analysis of Russian politics than Washington provides. What exactly are our Russian "experts" in Washington doing?
I am from Ekaterinburg, Sverdlovskaya oblast, Russia.
Also, all government employees were forced to vote (e.g. teachers).
The Sunday was made a working day in some institutes (4 in our city) to make students vote right there.
Obviously, soldiers, prisoners and mental patients all voted for Putin's party.
I've seen a lot of things of this kind here.