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Publicly Available Russian Election Results Hint At Fraud
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."
Wow. Your first link is to an error that was literally caught within hours of it happening and didn't impact the final total. The other issues point to general incompetency and in some limited, local cases, actual fraud. That's really in the same category as nearly nation-wide fraud that looks centralized. And let's say for a hypothetical that the US election fraud problems were nearly as severe as the Russian ones or as severe. Guess what? That doesn't magically make them ok. That one country has problems doesn't make it ok when similar problems occur elsewhere.
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.
In the US, they just stop you from voting if you are in a group likely to vote the wrong way.
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?
I have family in Russia. One of them told me about their colleague, a woman who's responsible for signing the ballot count. The votes are counted, the Communist Party is a clear winner in that riding, and she signs. Someone from United Russia then brings her a different paper, with the count modified to make United Russia (Putin's party) win. She says "I can't sign this, this is fraud." "Sign it." "No, I can't." "Sign it or you'll lose your job." Her meager salary is already not enough to live on, she can't afford to lose it. So she signs.
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".
Those horrible, corrupt foreign Governments.
30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010
"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.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."