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Graph Shows Fraud in Russian Elections

Posted by Zonk on from the little-to-the-left dept.

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."

10 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Putin's 7% cap on political parties pretty much annihilated most of the opposition. Why did they need to add votes? Out of habit?

    1. Re:Why? by Escogido · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well there are actually going to be 4 of them in the pairlament, and no, communists are usually not really negotiating anything no matter what. They are living pretty much in the 90s, keeping their slogans that boil down to 'down with the anti-people government/regime' which is there for like 10 years already. Their electorate (older people) are going fast due to natural reasons, but this time they seem to have got some votes of the dissenters who don't take Zhirinovsky serious and who realize that Fair Russia is not any different from United Russia.

    2. Re:Why? by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Heh. If you read the Russian, Chechnya (or however you spell it in western alphabet) has the highest turnout - 10,000% - and a perfect score - 100% - in voting for Putin.

      Lesse - last I heard, they were still fighting the Chechen rebels, nyet?

  2. You don't need brains to be a dictator by crath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient.

    You don't need brains to run a dictatorship, just a rampant willingness to fuck people over. Reminds me of some of our own leaders here in The West!

  3. The most interesting question: WHY? by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The most interesting question: why have they done that? I live in Russia and nobody here really doubts that the ruling party ("United Russia" - "Edinaja Rossija") influenced elections.

    The real approval rates of other opposition parties (communists excepted) were in single percents, anyway. And the real approval rate of United Russia was high enough - all manipulations possibly resulted in several extra seats in parliament for them. So it's not that Putin seriously risked losing his power.

    1. Re:The most interesting question: WHY? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The tongue-in-cheek reply would be "old habits die hard". But it's something else. Blatant election fraud (and, pardon if I say it directly, I doubt they're so stupid to rig it so badly) serves only one goal: It's a statement. The statement says pretty much "Look. We can manipulate the election any way we want. And? Nobody cared. See? We will win. No matter what. So you better stop trying."

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Those who count the votes... by xs650 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Josef Stalin

  5. Re:"rigged Elections" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Are you out of your mind? No, this isn't American democracy. This is sickness in its true form, also known as revolutionary leftism.

    No, Russia is going towards fascist dictatorship via right-wing populism. And the US is heading in the same direction (although it's not as far along) because morons like you think that right-wing populism is just fine and dandy.

  6. Re:Where did the data come from? by Escogido · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most likely from the GAS "Vybory" (short for State Automatized System "Elections") that is used to calculate preliminary voting results.

    I worked for 9 years in the Central Election Commission of Russia, and during my time a lot of technical people had access to the database, and it's not really hard to grab a copy of the DB or a report. I quit that job some years ago, but somehow I doubt a lot of things changed.

    This is not a security hole; the data is entered into the system straight from the signed protocol as soon as a lower level election commission does, and protocols are being made public right after they are signed. It also has no official status, at the data is only used for preliminary figures; the official results have to be delivered in paper form.

    While we're at it, the site of the Central Election Commission is http://www.cikrf.ru/ and the present election results will be eventually posted at http://www.cikrf.ru/elect_duma/npa/index.jsp. This is in Russian however, so I don't know how useful that would be..

  7. Re:"rigged Elections" by Xonstantine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You conveniently left out that Gore made the offer on Nov 15, after all previous recounts had failed to get the result desired. Gore wasn't being magnanimous or trying to be fair, he was trying his last gasp. And quite honestly, the state wide recount is irrelevant given the collusion between the Democrats and the media on election night, when the state of Florida was actually called for Gore before the polls closed in Western Florida, causing many people to literally walk away from the election lines. Western Florida, of course, is heavily Republican. You can usually tell what politicians are up to by what they accuse others of doing. For Republicans, it's cheating on their wives or taking drugs. For Democrats, it's committing vote fraud.